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FREEDOM'S BIRTHPLACE 

A Study of the Boston Negroes 



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IN rREED0K3 BIRTHPLACE 

A STUDY OF THE BOSTON NEGROES 

BY 

JOHN DANIELS 

'( 

Sometime Holder of the South End House Fellowship 

in Harvard University ; now Secretary of the 

Social Service Corporation, Baltimore 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cbe Slitocr^^ibe ptcs'S Cambribge 
1914 



^^\4Ziz 



COPYRIGHT, I9I4, BY THB SOUTH END HOUSE ASSOCIATION 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iqi^ 



FEB 16 1914 

e)CI.A:J6l98 9 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

It Is not fundamentally in the outward hindrance to 
vocational success or cultural recognition, but in the 
confusion and ineptness with which color prejudice 
affects the productive moral faculty of a whole racial 
group. The one great return to be made by the white 
urban citizen to the Negro for the wrongs which he has 
suffered is to bring to him in pervading and infectious 
ways the stirring incentive to group capacity and group 
achievement, through the long, relentless drill of sys- 
tematic, purposeful association. 

Out of such constructive discipline would emerge a 
type of Negro leader who would no less sternly fight in 
defense of every accomplished right of his brethren, 
but would also gradually and surely place them where 
they would steadilj' be gaining a stronger, freer, and 
fuller life in terms of the indisputable material and 
moral currency of the city as it is. 

Robert A. Woods. 



CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



PREFACE 

To Mr. Robert A. Woods, of the South End House, 
the writer desires to acknowledge his deep gratitude 
for constant guidance in connection with the making 
of the present study. Also to Mr. Albert J. Kennedy 
and to Mr. William I. Cole, both till recently of the 
staff of the above Settlement, the writer is greatly 
indebted, particularly for the painstaking reading and 
candid criticism of his manuscript preceding its final 
revision. The plan of casting the account mainly in 
the historical and the descriptive, rather than the 
argumentative, mould, to the extent which has been 
done, was suggested by Dr. Robert E. Park, now of 
the sociological department of Chicago University. 

Any adequate roll of those among the Negro people 
who have assisted would be impossible to call in the 
space here permitted. Some, however, have con- 
tributed an especially generous quota of their time. 
Grateful acknowledgment for such service is due Mr. 
William L. Reed, Mr. Butler R. Wilson, Mr. William 
H. Lewis, Mr. Archibald H. Grimke, Mr. William M. 
Trotter, Mr. William H. Dupree, Mr. Robert M. 
Coursey, Mr. Joshua A. Crawford, Mr. Joseph W. 
Houston, and Miss Eliza Gardner, — all of Boston. 
Beyond this, however, the writer wishes to record that 
the source from which in general he has derived his 
measure of sympathetic understanding and of close- 
range information, with regard to the conditions herein 



vi PREFACE 

describedras well as constant encouragement for the 
continuance and completion of his inquiries, has been 
found in the Negro people themselves. To them, their 
achievements, and their higher and broader future, this 
study is sincerely dedicated. 

In the interest both of accuracy and also of possible 
subsequent attention to this same subject, the writer 
will welcome any corrections, amplifications, or sug- 
gestions, in connection with the present narrative. For 
this purpose, he may be addressed in care of the 
publishers. 



CONTENTS 

I. Slave, Patriot, and Pioneer Freeman 1 

II. A Race Delivered 30 

III. Equal Rights and Public Favor 81 

IV. Reaction: The Negro Forced upon his 

own Resources 106 
V. Taking Root 133 
VI. Social Construction and Ethical Growth 158 
VII. The Upward Struggle of the Negro Church 224 
VIII. The Leverage of the Ballot 266 
IX. Economic Achievement; the Solid Foun- 
dation 308 
X. The Future of the Negro People 398 
Appendix 443 
Statistical Tables 457 
Index 481 



INTRODUCTION 

The residents of the South End House, early in the 
development of their work, were struck by a curious 
anomaly in the attitude of Boston citizens toward the 
Negro. Very large sums of money were annually con- 
tributed to schools for appropriate and effective meas- 
ures of improvement among colored people in the 
South, while practically no specific attention was paid 
to the serious problem of the steadily increasing Negro 
population of Boston itself. A few descendants of the 
Abolitionists, natural or spiritual, continued to have a 
care for the broad rights of the Negro, but this some- 
what abstract concern seemed to make it the more dif- 
ficult for them to find that there were once again new 
occasions bringing new duties; to realize that the issue 
was no longer merely one of equality but of contact. 

For the sake of a more human and more timely rela- 
tion, the South End House undertook in 1904 a small 
branch in a street inhabited almost entirely by an iso- 
lated cluster of colored families; an experiment which 
by gradual stages led to the establishment, on an inde- 
pendent basis, of the Robert Gould Shaw House, in the 
midst of the great Negro quarter of the city. 

The present study was begun among experiences 
associated with that development; and has been con- 
tinued by Mr. Daniels, as other work would permit, 
for a period of nine years. It is hoped that this pre- 
sentment may help the citizens of Boston to focalize 
their traditional devotion to the cause of the Negro in 



X INTRODUCTION 

greater degree upon conditions that are immediate in 
time and place. It may also be of service in cities and 
large towns throughout the country where the most 
distinctive of all our American problems is coming into 
its urban phase. 

It is, indeed, entirely possible that the issue, which 
for a century has run tantalizingly athwart every large 
motive of broad national progress, may proceed to 
play this same role, with unexpected variations and 
complications, in the life of our municipalities. As 
ever stronger magnets to unskilled labor, the cities of 
the North inevitably draw the Negroes to them. Even 
in the South it is anticipated that, with the develop- 
ment of cotton-picking machinery, an increasing pro- 
portion of Negroes will be driven from the farming 
regions to the towns. 

It cannot be doubted that the feeling of aversion on 
the part of the whites in the cities is increasing. Even 
the incoming immigrants begin to express it. It is 
often pathetically urged by Negro leaders that this 
sentiment is imparted to the newcomers by native 
Americans who have stifled in themselves the senti- 
ments inculcated by their fathers; but the actuality 
of the color prejudice is shown by the fact that some of 
the immigrants, notably the Italians, bring it with 
them. 

The city situation may be protected from this new 
danger, and it may be the means of shifting the Negro 
problem for the country as a whole into a normal and 
ultimately manageable angle, if the Negroes can be 
considered as an unassimilated social factor analogous 
to the diflFerent immigrant nationalities; and the people 



INTRODUCTION xi 

of the city as a whole, including the colored population, 
be accustomed to look upon the color line, in many of 
its aspects, as simply a much more extreme form of 
the cleavage which separates the diflferent types of 
immigrants from the natives and from one another. 
It is true that this analogy is incomplete: — at the 
point of racial intermixture it ceases. But its practical 
value can be very great. 

In the case of each immigrant nationality, bitter prej- 
udice has been encountered; but such experience has 
only more firmly established and specialized certain 
forms of economic, political, and religious allegiance 
within the nationality group. This formation has, on 
the whole, eased the process of assimilation ; has brought 
resource more quickly to the hand of the stranger; and 
made it possible to bring up within the shortest pos- 
sible time trained and powerful leaders who have 
secured for themselves, and then for their congeners, a 
solid and abiding foundation of influence and consider- 
ation throughout the community as a whole. This 
path beaten down by the footsteps of the great multi- 
tude of the new Americans is open to the Negro, and it 
is his only dependable way of entrance into the broad 
fellowship of American city life. The cities of the coun- 
try, in their community relations, are, for better or 
worse, decisively organized on the basis of racial dis- 
tinctions, and of a particular method for overcoming 
them. The Negro must adopt the method or rule him- 
self out of the game. 

The great secret is that of learning the power of asso- 
ciation based on racial loyalty. The immigrants have 
even proved that a certain sort of segregation, amid all 



3di INTRODUCTION 

the conflicting currents of city life, is provisionally a 
blessing. They have also learned the relative futility 
of scattered pleas for a flat parity of opportunity, and 
the indomitable quality of collective power in hand. 
Here is the test of whether the Negro of the cities can 
develop the urban type of intelligence through which 
city dwellers maintain themselves and make advances. 
The present measure of his capacity for registering in 
thought and purpose the indications of reality is in 
such achievements and such failures as he is making in 
organization. If the Negroes of Boston could, for 
instance, consolidate their purchasing power, and 
direct it as they collectively chose, they could quickly 
double or treble the number of their representatives 
who should be holding responsible positions in indus- 
trial and mercantile establishments. Mr. Daniels's 
treatment will be found particularly suggestive as to 
whether in economic opportunity the Negroes do not, 
in spite of prejudice, have almost as much as they on 
the average and collectively merit. 

That the Negroes as a type do not force conviction 
to the mind of the citizen as an economic asset is to-day 
very largely owing to the relative incapacity for loyal, 
continuous, result-getting team-work among them- 
selves. Their minor leaders are destroyed by the 
jealousies of such as should gladly be their followers; 
and those who are otherwise equipped to be their major 
leaders see in all forms of internal organization a trucu- 
lent surrender of the principle of social equality. 

One would be far from forgetting that the Negro suf- 
fers under a cruel load of injustice; but the point of inci- 
dence of this infliction is not where he thinks it to be. 



IN FREEDOM'S BIRTHPLACE 

CHAPTER I 

SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 

The Negro has had his part in the history of Boston 
almost as long as his Caucasian fellow-citizens. He 
came into the community in 1638, only eight years 
after the original settlement. 

The first Negroes, apparently but a few in number, 
were brought to Boston by a trading- vessel, the De- 
sire, as part of a cargo which, it is interesting to 
note, consisted for the rest of tobacco and cotton, the 
two commodities which have become the staples of 
the Negro's labor in America. These Negroes were 
brought directly from Providence in the Bahamas, 
where presumably they had undergone a brief season- 
ing, but they were in all probability native Africans, 
who not long before had been captured in the jungle. 
They were purchased by the people of Boston as 
slaves.^ 

* For the account of the first landing of Negroes in Boston, see 
Winthrop's New England, vol. i, p. 254 (p. 305, Savage edition). 
There is reason to believe that Negroes had been brought to the 
vicinity of Boston even before 1638. See Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. i, p. 
194. One of the earliest writers on New England (Josselyn, author 
of Two Voyages to New England) had occasion to visit Noddle's 
Island in the harbor, in October, 1637. He found, in the possession 
of one Maverick, three Negroes, two women and one man. Neither 
of the women could speak English. One of them seemed to have 
been a person of high rank in Africa. This writer observed that 
"the people are well accommodated with servants, some English, 
others Negroes." 



8 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Thus there arose, simultaneously with the Negro's 
advent, a contradiction between the abstract profes- 
sion of the white citizens of Boston and their concrete 
treatment of this race. The Puritans had founded the 
town in devotion to the cause of spiritual freedom. Yet 
they did not refrain, within a few years, from placing 
Negroes in a state of bondage, in which not only was 
the negation of spiritual freedom implicit, but which 
took away physical freedom as well. This contradic- 
tion was speedily to give trouble to the Puritan con- 
science, and was to have momentous consequences, in 
bringing that conscience to bear as a lever to change the 
Negro's lot. It was a contradiction, moreover, which 
in modified degree and form has survived to the pre- 
sent, and which still troubles the Boston community. 

These first Negroes were not, however, the first 
slaves in Boston. Indian captives had already been 
held in slavery. This fact naturally suggests the query 
as to why Indian slavery did not preclude, or at least 
continue to coexist with, Negro slavery. The most 
immediate reason why the enslavement of Indians was 
not kept up was that the Indian tribes made this prac- 
tice one of the grievances for their constant wars with 
the colonists, and in the treaties which were made 
stipulated its discontinuance. The more intrinsic 
reason, however, was that the Indian did not prove to 
be so good a slave as the Negro. On the one hand, the 
Indian's time-honored traditions had instilled in him 
the idea that manual toil was degrading, and his char- 
acteristic pride made him rebellious against such toil, 
and still more against the disgrace of being held in sub- 
jection. On the other hand, his equally characteristic 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 3 

sulkiness, his obstinacy in clinging to his own ways 
and in resisting the civilized ways of the white man, 
and his laziness, made him unsatisfactory in point of 
service. The Negro, however, though he lacked the 
innate pride which in itself commanded respect, was of 
a cheerful disposition, quick to imitate, readily teach- 
able, and, while somewhat given to loafing and inviting 
his soul, was for the most part industrious. Curiously 
enough, it appears from the old records that the Ne- 
groes brought to Boston by the Desire had been pur- 
chased with the proceeds from the sale of fifteen 
Indian boys and two squaws whom the vessel had 
carried away on her outward voyage from her home 
port, near-by Salem ;^ that is, Indians were practically 
exchanged for Negroes, — a transaction the inference 
of which is obvious. 

Though these two peoples were not to undergo a 
common experience in slavery, their destinies were 
nevertheless interlinked by the white man's coming to 
America; — destinies strangely alike, yet opposite. 
The Negroes were to be taken away from their imme- 
morial home-land. The Indians were to have their 
immemorial home-land taken away from them. There 
is a suggestion of elemental sympathy in the fact that 
from the beginning the two races intermarried. To- 
day, hundreds of Negroes in Boston are imbued with 
an Indian strain. The Negroes may boast the unique 
distinction of having more aboriginal American blood 
flowing through their veins than any other racial 
group except the present-day Indians themselves. 
Should the "noble red man" eventually pass into ex- 
^ Winthrop's New England, vol. i, p. 234 (p. 279, Savage's edition). 



4 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tinction, it will be the Negro who will transmit his 
heritage to the modern American composite. 

There is one further aspect from which the Negro 
in Boston is a significant figure. His advent in that 
city followed by only nineteen years the first appear- 
ance of Negroes in the colonies.^ His history in Boston, 
going back two hundred and seventy-five years, is 
therefore very nearly coextensive with, and so within 
bounds representative of, the history of the Negro 
people in the United States. 

For the first century and a half, roughly, from 1638 
down to the Revolution, the chronicles bearing upon 
the subject in hand have to do chiefly with slavery 
and the slave-trade, and their suppression. 

The first slave-ship fitted out in the colonies is be- 
lieved to have sailed from Boston in 1646.^ Thereafter 
not a few Boston merchants engaged in the traffic. 
Some ships carried barrel-staves, fish, and rum to the 
Madeiras and the Canaries, and brought back Negroes 
from the Guinea coast and Madagascar, for sale chiefly 
in the West Indies, whence cargoes of sugar and mo- 
lasses were taken home to be manufactured into rum 
for further trade. ^ Other ships took miscellaneous 
cargoes to the West Indies and bartered for slaves, 
which were sold in the Southern colonies.^ Direct 
importation of Negroes into Boston remained slight 
till the close of the century, and never became large. 
More were obtained indirectly, from the South, and 
from the Dutch in New York. In 1680, Governor 

' The first Negroes brought into the colonies were slaves landed 
at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1G19. 
^ U.S. Census, 1860, vol. 2, p. iv. 
* Reuben Gold Thwaites, The Colonies, p. 185. 



SLAVE. PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 5 

Bradstreet of Massachusetts stated, "There hath been 
no Company of blacks or Slaves brought into the 
Country since the beginning of this plantation, for the 
space of Fifty yeares,^ only one small Vessell about 
two yeares since, after twenty months' voyage to 
Madagasca, brought hither betwixt Forty and fifty 
Negro's, most women and children Sold here for 10£ 
15£ and 20£ apiece, which stood the merchants in 
neer 40£ apiece one with another. Now and then, two 
or three Negro's are brought hither from Barbados 
and other of his Majesties plantations, and sold here 
for about twenty pounds apiece. So that there may be 
within our Government about one hundred or one 
hundred and twenty." ^ In 1708, Governor Dudley 
gave four hundred as the number of slaves in Boston, 
adding that half of these had been born here.^ The 
others had been brought in since 1698.^ From that 
year to 1727, when, it is recorded, "the traffic in 
slaves appears to have been more an object than at any 
period before or since, "^ from twenty -five to fifty Ne- 
groes were brought in annually. Thenceforth there 
was a steady decline. 

The lot of the slaves in Boston, however, was not 
severe. Most of them were house and body servants, 
and in fact the less forbidding term "servant" soon 
came into common use. The Massachusetts Body of 

* Governor Bradstreet apparently used the expression "Fifty 
yeares" roughly, or else the Negroes brought to Boston in 1638 were 
not sufficient in number to be referred to as a "Company." 

2 Mass. Hist. Coll., Third Series, viii, p. 337. 

^ Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor, p. 230. 

■* Drake's History of Boston, p. 574. 

6 Ibid. 



6 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Liberties of 1641 contained the imperative declaration 
that the slaves should be accorded "all the liberties 
and Christian usages which the law of God established 
in Israel doeth morally require," and the instructions 
from the Crown to Governor Andros in 1668 required 
him to have a law passed restraining brutality on the 
part of masters and overseers, and making wilful kill- 
ing of slaves punishable by death. ^ 

Hardly had slavery got a foothold, moreover, before 
opposition to it, on humanitarian grounds, began. As 
early as 1701, citizens of Boston had appealed to their 
representatives in the colony's Legislature, "to put a 
period to negroes being slaves," and to encourage the 
bringing in of white servants.^ The same sentiment 
was further evidenced by persistent efforts to stop the 
rating of Negroes as live stock for purposes of taxation. 
About 1712, Judge Samuel Sewall, the leader of the 
anti-slavery agitation of that period, wrote a tract en- 
titled "The Selling of Joseph," which greatly furthered 
the movement toward manumission. The slaves them- 
selves entered upon a determined effort to obtain their 
freedom. In 1770, James, a slave of Richard Lech- 
mere, of Cambridge, brought an action against his 
master for detaining him in bondage. The Negroes 
raised money enough to employ counsel and push the 
matter through to a conclusion. They won a victory, 
and from that time on there were many such suits and 
the majority of them were successful.^ A pamphlet 
containing an account of the famous Sommersett case, 

* Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor, p. 220. 

^ Mass Hist. Coll., Second Series, viii, p. 184. 

' Address of Charles Sumner, U. S. Senate, June 28, 1854. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 7 

which occurred in England in 1772, and in which the 
court had ruled that no one could be held in bondage 
in that country, was widely and effectively circulated 
in Massachusetts, as well as in the other Northern 
colonies. In 1773^ and again in 1777^ groups of slaves 
petitioned the Legislature to enact emancipation. 

The fact that there were free Negroes — or, as they 
were styled to distinguish them from the slaves, "free 
persons of color" — in the community, helped to un- 
dermine slavery. As has been mentioned, some Ne- 
groes were bound as slaves for a term of years only. 
Others gained their freedom through exceptional indus- 
try or the exhibition of superior qualities. Not a few 
were set at liberty in return for military service. Some 
escaped, and, thanks in large part to a public senti- 
ment inclined to be sympathetic, contrived to evade 
capture and return. Negroes already free often pur- 
chased the freedom of kinsmen still held in bondage. 
Practically from the beginning, moreover, a consider- 
able proportion of slaves were manumitted by more 
than ordinarily kind-hearted masters. In 1708, ac- 
cording to the town officials' lists, there were thirty- 
three free Negroes in Boston, and thenceforth their 
number rapidly increased. The presence of this class 
prevented slavery from coming to be accepted either 
by the Negroes or the whites as a foreordained and 
necessary institution. 

Slavery got its death-blow, however, from the 
rights-of-man fervor which inspired the Revolution. 

1 Mass. Legislative Report on Free Negroes and Mulattoes, January 
16, 1822. 
^ William C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 



8 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Enthusiasm for the principles of equality could scarcely 
avoid being brought hard up against the paradox of 
the Negro's status. Augmented by appreciation of the 
service which, as will appear, the Negro rendered in 
the war, that enthusiasm finally assured the Negro his 
freedom. Though an exact date has never been set to 
mark the termination of slavery in Massachusetts, the 
approximate time of its disappearance is sufficiently 
certain. "How, or by what act particularly, slavery 
was abolished in Massachusetts, whether by the adop- 
tion of the opinion in Sommersett's case, as a declara- 
tion and modification of the common law, or by the 
Declaration of Independence, or by the constitution 
of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine, and it is 
rather a matter of curiosity than utility; it being 
agreed on all hands, that if not abolished before, it was 
so by the declaration of rights." ^ The declaration of 
rights here referred to was that drafted by John Adams 
and adopted by the Massachusetts Constitutional 
Convention of 1780, the first article of which read: 
"All men are born free and equal, and have certain 
natural, essential and unalienable rights: among 
which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and de- 
fending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, 
possessing and protecting property; in fine, that of 
seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness." 
The slave-trade was formally prohibited in 1788, 
twenty years before similar action was taken by the 
Federal Government. In 1790 the first national 
census showed not a single slave in the state. Though 

1 Statement by Chief Justice Shaw in 1836; — Commonwealth v. 
Aves, 18 Pickering, p. 209. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 9 

several other Northern states had by that time 
adopted acts of conditional emancipation, in the com- 
plete elimination of slavery Massachusetts had at- 
tained a unique distinction. 

This was the first great result wrought by the dis- 
turbance which slavery had produced in the Puritan 
conscience. Boston, as the active center of the move- 
ment which brought slavery to an end in Massachu- 
setts, became the birthplace of the Negro's freedom in 
America, in point of time. There, nearly a century and 
a half ago, the Negro first came into the estate of a 
free citizen. Some fourscore years later, Boston was 
to prove his freedom's birthplace in point of relation 
to his emancipation throughout the land. 

While slavery was being stamped out in Massa- 
chusetts, the historic events which terminated in the 
American Revolution were taking place. It seems like 
something more than mere coincidence — like a nat- 
ural intervolution of kindred issues, indeed — that the 
Negro's first attainment of freedom was contempo- 
raneous with the colonists' victorious struggle for 
their own independence; and that in this struggle the 
Negro took a worthy and in truth a memorable part. 

The momentous incident which finally drove the 
colonists to the extreme decision of separation from 
the mother country was the Boston Massacre. The 
central hero of that incident was a Negro, or a Negro- 
Indian half-breed, Crispus Attucks.^ English troops 

^ Attucks was an escaped slave, who had run away from his mas- 
ter, a resident of Framingham, Massachusetts, in September, 1750. 
In an advertisement for his apprehension, which appeared in the 
Boston Gazette on October 2 of that year, he was described as a 
mulatto, over six feet in height, and well proportioned. 



10 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

had been quartered in Boston since October, 1768, to 
repress any violent opposition to the obnoxious Taxa- 
tion Act of the previous year. The presence of these 
troops was most offensive to the citizens and provoked 
ominous friction. On the evening of the 5th of March, 
1770, some soldiers leaving the main guard at the head 
of King (now State) Street, were met by a crowd 
armed with cudgels. The resulting row swelled the 
numbers of the crowd, which soon set itself to harrying 
the sentinel on duty before the custom house, opposite 
the head of the street. Finally this sentinel, in exas- 
peration, struck a boy with the butt of his musket. 
The boy ran off and set up an alarm, and in a few min- 
utes a furious crowd, headed by Attucks, rushed upon 
the scene. The sentinel was joined by other soldiers, 
till ten were in line. At last they fired, killing Attucks 
and two of his companions, James Caldwell and 
Samuel Gray, and mortally wounding two others, 
Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr. The alarm bells 
of the city clanged, the British drums beat to arms, 
and the streets were thronged with soldiers and en- 
raged citizens. 

Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson prevented fur- 
ther bloodshed by placing the ten soldiers under arrest 
and inducing the officers to send the troops back to bar- 
racks. But next day a town meeting was held, and the 
citizens voted "that nothing can rationally be ex- 
pected to restore the peace of the town and prevent 
blood and carnage but the immediate withdrawal of 
the troops." This action forced the removal of the 
troops to Castle Island in the harbor. Two days later, 
March 8, a public funeral was held. The four bodies 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 11 

were deposited together in a single grave. Over the 
grave was erected a stone with this inscription : — 

" Long as in Freedom's cause the wise contend, 
Dear to your country shall your fame extend. 
While to the world the lettered stone shall tell. 
Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell." 

This marked grave lies in the northeast corner of the 
old cemetery between the Park Street Church and the 
Tremont Building, close to the grave of Samuel 
Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and 
Governor of the commonwealth. In a prominent posi- 
tion on the Common, midway facing Tremont Street, 
stands a more conspicuous memorial, in the form of a 
monument, erected by the State in 1888. A figure of 
Liberty holds in her left hand a broken chain, in her 
right the flag, and at her feet crouches the American 
eagle. The scene of the massacre is represented on a 
bronze tablet, the British soldiers with smoking mus- 
kets still raised, Attucks lying dead on the ground, 
and the others falling back into the arms of their fel- 
lows. Above, to the left, are carved the words of 
Daniel Webster, — "From that moment we may date 
the severance of the British Empire"; and to the left, 
those of John Adams, — "On that night the founda- 
tion of American independence was laid." The Fifth 
of March was, in fact, celebrated as the chief American 
holiday till the Fourth of July took its place. 

When the Revolution broke out, the question arose 
as to whether Negroes should be allowed to serve as 
soldiers. At that time a considerable proportion of the 
Negroes in Massachusetts, the majority of those in 
the other Northern colonies, and nearly all of those 



12 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

in the Southern colonies, were still slaves. The oppo- 
sition to their enlistment appears to have been due 
mainly to recognition of the obvious inconsistency of 
calling upon a slave class to help in a war for independ- 
ence. Because the inconsistency involved was less 
direct, there was less opposition to enlisting free 
Negroes. The element that wanted slavery abolished 
pressed strongly for general emancipation, urging that 
this was the policy dictated by national self-interest. 
The proposal was broached in the first Provincial Con- 
gress in 1774, but was allowed to subside. In May, 
1775, the Committee of Safety passed a resolve that in 
their opinion "the admission of any persons, as sol- 
diers, but only such as are freemen, will be inconsist- 
ent with the principles that are to be supported, and 
reflect dishonor on the Colony, and that no slaves be 
admitted into the army upon any consideration what- 
ever." Washington, having assumed command of the 
army around Boston on July 3, 1775, on the 10th is- 
sued instructions to the recruiting officers not to allow 
any Negro to enlist. At a council of war on October 8, 
it was agreed unanimously to reject all slaves, and, by 
a great majority, to reject Negroes altogether, and in 
November, Washington issued further instructions to 
that effect. 

Whatever may have been the nominal policy in this 
matter, however, the fact is that Negroes were allowed 
to serve in the Revolutionary army from the outset, 
and in increasing numbers till the war's close ; for the 
reason, evidently, that their military service was too 
badly needed to be refused. Bancroft states that, at 
Cambridge, "Free Negroes stood in the ranks by the 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 13 

side of white men." On September, 1775, the Contin- 
ental Congress debated whether to order all Negro 
soldiers, slave and free, then in service, to be dis- 
charged, and apparently because of their number, de- 
cided against such action. In December, Washington 
issued general orders as follows: "As the General is 
informed that numbers of free Negroes are desirous of 
enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting oflScers to en- 
train them, and promises to lay the matter before the 
Congress, who, he doubts not, will approve of it." 
Congress, in January, 1776, ordered that "the free 
Negroes who have served faithfully in the army at 
Cambridge may be reinstated therein, but no others." 
Though it thus appears that the relaxation applied 
mainly to free Negroes, yet there is no doubt that a 
considerable number of slaves served as soldiers, and 
that many slaves in fact earned their manumission 
thereby. From an official document dated August 24, 
1778, it is known that altogether there were 755 Ne- 
groes distributed through the main army under Wash- 
ington's immediate command.^ An additional number, 
it may be assumed, were enlisted in subsidiary corps. 
Besides, there were at least two fighting bodies com- 
posed entirely of Negroes. One of these was the famous 
Rhode Island regiment, which successfully defended 
Red Bank at Bunker Hill — 400 Negroes against 1500 
Hessians. 2 The other was a Massachusetts company 
known as "The Bucks of America," and commanded 
by " Colonel" Middleton, a Boston Negro, who was a 

' For the account of Negroes in the Revolutionary army, up to 
this point, the facts have been taken from the Thirty-fourth Annual 
Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, pp. 227-28. 

2 im., p. 228. 



14 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

horse-tamer by vocation, and apparently a picturesque 
character. After the war a banner in recognition of 
bravery was presented to this company by the Gov- 
ernor.^ 

Of the individual Negro soldiers from Boston and 
vicinity, the names of several have come down by 
reason of their exceptional valor or other distinction. 
Two who made honorable records were John T. Hilton 
and Seymour Burr, the latter a slave who gained his 
freedom by serving in the army.^ Tradition has it that 
about a dozen members of the Lew family, which ap- 
pears to have combined valor, musical ability, and 
thrift, formed themselves into a guerrilla fighting 
organization known as "Lew's Band." Barzalai Lew 
was a fifer at Bunker Hill.^ Primus Hall, of Boston, 
was body-servant to Colonel Pickering, of Massachu- 
setts, with whom Washington was on the most inti- 
mate and confidential terms. There is a story that one 
evening Washington came to Pickering's tent, to talk 
over plans, and remained so late that he decided to 
stay all night. Some time after he had retired, he awoke 
and saw the Negro sitting up awake. He asked him 
why he was not in bed, and then, realizing that he 
himself was occupying the only extra bed, he com- 
pelled Hall, in spite of protestations, to share it with 
him.'* 

The Negro who won most note in the Revolution 
was Peter Salem, of Framingham, which is not far 
from Boston. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, he shot 
and killed the British major, Pitcairn, at the moment 

^ W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 
« Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 15 

when the latter, leading one of the enemy's most des- 
perate charges, mounted the walls, shouting, "The 
day is ours." For this exploit he was specially pre- 
sented to General Washington. In the celebrated pic- 
ture by Colonel Trumbull, who saw the battle from 
Roxbury and who made a painting in 1786, the figure 
of Salem stands out conspicuously, and other Negroes 
may be discerned among the white soldiers.^ A repre- 
sentation of Salem also appeared on some of the bills 
of the old Monumental Bank of Charlestown and of 
the Freeman's Bank of Boston. ^ When the statue of 
General Joseph Warren was dedicated on the 17th 
of June, 1857, the Honorable Edward Everett said, in 
his address: "It is the monument of the event of the 
Battle of Bunker Hill; of all the brave men who shared 
its perils, — alike of Prescott and Putnam and War- 
ren, the chief of the day, and the colored man, Salem, 
who is reported to have shot the gallant Pitcairn as he 
mounted the parapet. Cold as the clods on which they 
rest, still as the silent heavens to which it soars, it is 
yet vocal, eloquent in their undivided praise."^ 

Such was the account that the Negro rendered of 
himself in the crisis which determined the future of the 
land to which he had been brought as a slave, and in 
which for the most part he was still held in bondage. 
In that crisis, he did not desert or turn against his en- 
slavers, though he had abundant opportunity so to do. 
Neither did he prove a coward or a parasite. He made 
common cause with the white colonials, and fought 

^ George Livermore, Negroes as Slaves, Citizens, and Soldiers. 

2 W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 

' Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches, vol. in, p. 259. 



16 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

loyally by their side as a patriot soldier. Therein was 
his both an honorable and a substantial part in the 
birth of the American nation,^ 

Having entered into Boston's history first in the role 
of slave, and then in that of Revolutionary soldier, 
what part was the Negro to have in the community's 
upbuilding in ways of free citizenship and peaceful 
industry? In the years of the nation's beginnings, 
what advance was the Negro making on his own ac- 
count? 

With respect to the size of the Negro population, the 
first reliable information had been obtained in 1742. 
According to a rough census, there were in that year 
1374 Negroes in Boston, slave and free. A similar 
enumeration ten years later showed 1541, forming 
about ten per cent of a total population of 15,731. In 
1754, a special count of slaves was made, and 989 were 
listed in Boston. At that time, therefore, the free 
Negroes must have formed a proportion of somewhat 
over one third. Owing to the decline of the slave-trade 
and a high mortality, the number of Boston's Negro 
inhabitants diminished through the remainder of the 
century. By 1765, it had fallen to 848, and by 1790, 

1 Previous to the Revolution, the Negro had fought in the wars 
which the colonists waged with the French and their Indian allies. 
The Lew family also had one or two members in those early con- 
flicts. 

Later, in the War of 1812, which tried and proved the strength of 
the young nation, the Negro again rendered sturdy service. A pic- 
turesque story of loyalty is told about one Richard Seavers, of Bos- 
ton. He had entered the British navy, but at the outbreak of the 
war he refused to remain with the enemy and gave himself up as a 
prisoner. He was a man of giant physique and strength, and by vir- 
tue of these qualities made himself the "King" of the four hundred 
and fifty blacks in Dartmoor Prison. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 17 

to 766, or only four per cent of the total population. 
Thenceforth, though the proportion remained practi- 
cally the same, there was a slow biit constant growth 
in number; to 1174 in 1800, 1468 in 1810, and 1690 in 
1820. The Increase was due in most part to the coming 
in of free Negroes, chiefly from other parts of the 
North, but to some extent from the South. Inasmuch 
as by 1804, emancipation had taken place in all 
the states north of Maryland, and the free Negroes 
had come to form thirteen per cent of the total Negro 
population of the country, it is clear how the Negro 
community of Boston was able to draw substantial 
accessions from this free element. 

In the earliest days most of the Negroes who did not, 
as slaves and servants, live in white households, were 
congregated about the wharves at the extreme north- 
ern tip of the North End, opposite Charlestown. This 
locality was customarily referred to as "New Guinea." 
Till about 1820, probably a majority of the Negroes 
continued to live in various parts of the North End 
and of the middle portion of the city, now the down- 
town business section, for the reason that these were 
till then the only thickly settled districts.^ Even before 
1800, however, there had begun a shifting of the Negro 
population to the comparatively new and open West 
End. 

The economic status of the Negro at that period is 
suggested by a most interesting section of the census 

* For a long time the western portion of the Copp's Hill Burying 
Ground, which overlooks the harbor, was reserved for slaves and 
freedmen, the earthly remains of over a thousand of whom lie buried 
there. 



18 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

of 1790. This section consisted of a complete list of 
heads of families, with their names and the number of 
persons in their households. The fact that the ma- 
jority of the 766 Negroes in Boston were not entered 
independently by name, but simply as "Negroes" 
attached to the respective white households, implies 
that the passing of slavery had not produced any 
sweeping change in the local economic and industrial 
position of this race. Further evidence to the same 
efiFect, and applying, moreover, to conditions which 
still prevailed forty years later, has come do\Mi from 
another source. The city directories of the time used 
to list the Negroes separately. The directory for 1829 
contains the names of 224 Negroes, with their occupa- 
tions. The total Negro population of that year must 
have been close to 1690, which was the number shown 
by the census of the year following. Assuming even 
that each one of these names was that of a head of a 
family, and that there were four additional non-work- 
ing members to each family, nearly 600 persons would 
still be left unaccounted for. The inference is that at 
least these 600 Negroes, or approximately a third of 
the Negro population, were not reckoned of sufficient 
importance to be hunted up and entered in the direc- 
tory. They were no doubt family servants, or laborers 
of lowest grade, who picked up an uncertain living in 
whatever way they could. 

That the Negro was beginning to make industrial 
and economic progress, however, is also plain. Of the 
224 Negroes listed in the directory of 1829, 54 were 
designated as "laborers." These were doubtless street 
laborers, care-takers of buildings and estates, and the 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 19 

like. The number of waiters, bootblacks, cooks, win- 
dow-cleaners, sweeps, wood-sawers, coachmen, and 
unspecified "servants," was 30; that of laundresses, 8. 
There were 36 sailors. The trades were represented by 
a cordwainer, a housewright, a grain-measurer, a soap- 
maker, a hair-renovator, and a boot-maker. The 
Negroes had almost a monopoly of the barbering busi- 
ness. The directory gave the names of 32 " hairdress- 
ers," most of whom were owners of shops, situated in 
every part of the city. There were 2 handcart men, 14 
clothes shops, most of them on Brattle Street, 4 tailors, 
a junk-shop, a provision shop, a general shop, and 4 
boarding-houses. Thus at that early day a promising 
proportion of the Negroes had become business pro- 
prietors. The sole representatives of the professions 
were two ministers. The fact that 26 persons were 
given as having independent residences, but no occu- 
pations, and that some of these were widows, warrants 
the surmise that a few Negroes must have met with 
sufiicient material prosperity to enable them to live 
on their savings and to leave their families provided 
for. 

The higher field of cultural accomplishment was as 
yet unentered, save by one interesting figure who will 
always retain a unique place in the history of her 
people. This was Phillis Wheatley, the poetess. She 
was brought to Boston from Africa on a slave-ship in 
1761, a little girl of eight or nine years, and was pur- 
chased by one John Wheatley as a servant for his wife. 
She showed a fondness for books, and, encouraged by 
her mistress, soon acquired what was at that time a 
superior education. Expression of her thoughts in 



20 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

verse was natural to her, and at the age of fourteen she 
had written poems which indicated her latent ability. 
When she was nineteen she was taken to England on a 
visit, and was there made much of. A volume of her 
poems, dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, and 
prefaced by the signed statement of the governor and 
the lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts and fifteen 
prominent citizens of Boston, witnessing that the writer 
was in truth a Negro servant, was published in Lon- 
don in 1773, and subsequently passed through several 
editions, in England and America. On her return to 
Boston in 1775, Phillis was given her freedom. She 
became a member of the congregation which wor- 
shiped at the Old South Meeting-House. Soon after- 
wards the Wheatley family was broken up by death, 
and Phillis married a "Dr." Peters, a Negro of more 
show than substance, who had a small shop on Court 
Street. She fell into severe want, her health failed, and 
she died in Boston in 1796.^ Her volume of verse had 
been called, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious 
and Moral," and all her poems had a deeply religious 
character. One, entitled "On Being Brought from 
Africa to America," is not only typical in this respect, 
but because of the author's own life history and the 
Negro's position in the community, possesses also a 
peculiar interest. It is as follows : — 

" 'T was mercy brought me from my pagan land. 
Taught my benighted soul to understand 
That there's a God — that there's a Saviour, too: 
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. 

1 For Phillis Wheatley, See William Wells Brown, The Black Man; 
W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution; and the Encyclopaedia 
Americana. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 21 

Some view our sable race with scornful eye — 
'Their color is a diabolic dye.' 
Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain 
May be refined, and join the angelic train." 

Social organization had its beginning among the 
Negroes in 1784, in the formation of a Masonic lodge 
with fifteen original members. Moreover, this lodge, it 
is maintained, was the first, either white or Negro, es- 
tablished in the United States under a charter from the 
Masonic body in England.^ The founder of the lodge 
was Prince Hall, one of the small number of Negro 
heads of families listed in the federal census six years 
later. By vocation he was a soapmaker, by avocation 
a preacher, and apparently he was a man of character 
and ability, who held the position of leader among his 
people. Above his grave in the old Copp's Hill Bury- 
ing Ground stands a commemorative shaft placed 
there in 1895 by the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Mas- 
sachusetts (Negro Masonic), which numbers to-day 
over six hundred members. 

A further and more important advance in organiza- 
tion was made with the founding of the first Negro 
church, originally called the African Meeting-House, 
in 1805.2 Previously the Negroes had attended the 
same churches as the whites. In the earliest days, 
while slavery was still in existence, they were restricted 
to certain pews or to a slave gallery, like the one which 
may still be seen in the Old North Church. Even after 

^ The author has not gone into the annals of Masonry to ascer- 
tain whether this claim is amply supported by evidence. 

^ This church may have grown out of an "African Society," of 
which the author has been able to find no other mention than that it 
was formed in 1797, with forty-four members. 



22 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

slavery went out of existence, as a general rule Negroes 
were expected to sit in the less desirable and least con- 
spicuous seats. It was, apparently, not such discrimin- 
ation, however, but rather the increase of the Negroes 
as an element in the population and the growth of a 
community of interest among them, which led to the 
formation of a separate Negro church. This church 
was erected in Smith Court, off Belknap (now Joy) 
Street, in the West End. The building is said to have 
been put up entirely with Negro labor. 

The establishment of the African Meeting-House 
had a decisive influence on the Negro colony in two 
ways apart from its religious life. In the first place, the 
fact that it was located in the West End no doubt 
greatly accelerated the movement of the Negroes to 
that section. Furthermore, by providing the Negroes 
with the only good-sized gathering place of their own, 
it naturally became their principal rallying-point, not 
only for religious purposes, but for whatever other 
object might bring them together. In this way it did 
much to promote their general group development. 

As in the case of church attendance, so it was also in 
the case of school attendance; — for a long time Negro 
children went to the public schools with the white 
children, though apparently they were kept more or 
less apart from them. The number of Negro chil- 
dren who took advantage of this common privilege, 
however, was very small, one of the alleged reasons 
therefor being that they were ridiculed and at times 
mistreated by the white children. In 1798, some of the 
more ambitious Negro parents made the independent 
move of opening a private school, in the support of 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 23 

which friendly white persons soon assisted. Shortly 
after the erection of the African Meeting-House, in 
1805, the school was transferred thither, and there 
continued in existence twenty -nine years. In 1800, 
the next step was taken; a petition, signed by sixty- 
six Negroes, asking that the city establish and sup- 
port a separate school for Negro children, was sub- 
mitted to the school committee. This request was 
refused, apparently on the ground that Negro chil- 
dren were still free to attend the general public 
schools, until 1820, when the city did start a Negro 
primary school. The fact that even then, however, 
after a school had been especially founded, not more 
than a third of the Negro children attended,^ shows 
that previously it must have been lack of ambition, 
combined with economic pressure, on the part of the 
majority of Negro parents, rather than unpleasant 
treatment of their children at the hands of white chil- 
dren, which was mainly responsible for keeping the 
Negro boys and girls away from the public schools. 
Though so far as available records show, no formal 
action was taken to revoke the Negro's privilege of 
attending the general schools, that privilege practically 
lapsed into disuse soon after the establishment of the 
separate school. 

The Negro's effective right to the franchise is said to 
have been established by the test case of Paul and 
John Cuffe, in 1778. These two thrifty Negroes, of 
whom the former, Paul Cuffe, was a successful ship- 
owner and far-ranging navigator, ^ were called upon by 

1 Report of the Primary School Committee, June 15, 1846. 
* Booker Washington, The Story of the Negro. 



24 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the Town of Dartmouth, not far from Boston, to pay 
a personal tax. They demurred, contending that inas- 
much as they were not allowed to vote, they should 
not be held to pay taxes. After protracted argument, 
the town authorities admitted that taxpaying and the 
privilege of voting should go together. The case was 
regarded as establishing a precedent.^ Any further 
question as to the Negro's rights was settled by the 
adoption of the Body of Liberties of 1790, which guar- 
anteed manhood suffrage, without regard to race. Yet 
at that period very few of the Negroes in Boston exer- 
cised the franchise, or took any interest in political 
affairs. 

The founding of the Negro Masonic lodge, the 
Negro church, and the Negro school, and the success- 
ful protest of the Cuffes against taxation without rep- 
resentation, are most of all significant as bearing wit- 
ness to the rise of a spirit of self-reliance on the part of 
the Negroes. Previously they had been dependent, as 
slaves or servants, on the whites, with little initiative 
of their own. Their budding independence therefore 
first led them naturally into a centripetal movement 
of separate organization among themselves. Any hos- 
tility on the part of the whites was apparently a 
secondary factor in this result. 

What, however, were the actual relations between 
the Negro and his white fellows at that time? What 
place did the Negro then occupy in the community? 

* W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. It is not entirely 
clear, however, whether this case established the positive right to 
vote, or only the negative right to withhold taxes unless allowed to 
vote. 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 25 

The very names which many of the race bore, as 
shown by the heads of families section of the 1790 
census, are suggestive of the Negro's status. ^ " Crum " 
Barnes, "Cuff" Bennett, and "Sambo" Jackson are 
not appellations which conjure up individuals of any 
great degree of dignity and respect. And in fact the 
Negro's position at that time, generally speaking, ap- 
pears to have been not far above the level of such 
names. It was a position too inferior to carry a sug- 
gestion of any sort of equality with the whites. For 
this very reason, the Negro was not the object of the 
kind of animosity on the part of the whites which in 
later years the suggestion of equality aroused. Rather, 
he was looked upon as belonging to a lower order, and 
as being the ordained serving-man of the community. 
As such he was treated for the most part with conde- 
scending good humor. But he was also made the butt 
of jest and sport, and sometimes the victim of brutal 
outbursts. 

Testimony to both the ill usage the Negro suffered, 
and the way he himself felt regarding the treatment 

^ This census is interesting also as shedding light on the deriva- 
tion of Negro names and revealing them in process of formation. 
Many are Biblically inspired, as, for instance, "Adam" Rowe, 
"Joel" Harding, "Luke" Taylor, and "Samson" Brown. "Solomon 
Isaac" assumed or was burdened with more than his fair share of 
responsibility for perpetuating the memory of the Old Testament 
worthies. Another large class of names hark back to the heroes of 
ancient secular history and even to the gods of mythology; as, for 
instance, "Cato" Moore, "Nero" Davis, "Cyrus" Eustis, and 
"Jupiter" Smith. Other names were apparently geographically 
derived. " Boston " occurs both as a surname, as in " Philip Boston," 
and as a first name, as in "Boston Roby," "York" Ruggles, 
"Charlestown" Fluckes, "Glouster" Haskins, and "Hampshire 
Dennie." The majority of the surnames are those of the white fam- 
ilies in which the bearers or their parents had served. 



36 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

meted out to him, is afforded by an extract from a 
"Charge to the African Lodge" which Prince Hall, to 
whom reference as the founder of that lodge has been 
made, delivered to his fellow-Masons in 1797, and 
which was subsequently published in pamphlet form. 
The extract in point is as follows : — 

Now, my brethren, as we see and experience, that all things 
here are frail and changeable and nothing here to be de- 
pended upon : Let us seek those things which are above, and 
at the same time let us pray to Almighty God, while we re- 
main in the tabernacle, that he would give us the grace of 
patience and strength to bear up under all our troubles, 
which at this day God knows we have our share. Patience, 
I say, for were we not possessed of a great measure of it, you 
could not bear up under the daily insults you meet with in 
the streets of Boston; much more on public days of recrea- 
tion, how are you shamefully abus'd, and that at such a de- 
gree, that you may truly be said to carry your lives in your 
hands; and the arrows of death are flying about your heads; 
helpless old women have their clothes torn off their backs, 
even to the exposing of their nakedness. . . . My brethren, 
let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses 
we at present labour under: for the darkest is before the 
break of day. 

Absence of bitterness, enduring patience, simple 
religious faith, and persistent hopefulness were the 
qualities evinced in this exhortation. And these quali- 
ties had in fact characterized the Negro from the be- 
ginning and have continued to characterize him, in his 
reaction to the adversities of his lot. 

From time to time various attempts had been made 
to stop the immigration of Negroes to Boston and even 
to get rid of those already her^, on the ground that 
poverty, disease, and crime were rife among them. In 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 27 

1788, during the same session of the Legislature which 
adopted the act prohibiting the slave-trade, a law 
was passed for the suppression and punishment of 
" rogues, vagabonds, common beggars, and other idle, 
disorderly, and lewd persons." By Section V of this 
law it was provided, "that no person being an African 
or Negro, other than a subject of the Emperor of Mo- 
rocco, or a citizen of some one of the United States (to 
be evidenced by a certificate from the Secretary of the 
State of which he is a citizen), shall tarry within this 
Commonwealth for a longer time than two months."* 
And in the " Massachusetts Mercury " of September 16, 
1800, appeared the following "Notice to Blacks": — 

The officers of police having made return to the subscriber 
of the names of the following persons, who are Africans or 
Negroes, not subjects of the Emperor of Morocco nor citizens 
of the United States, the same are hereby warned and di- 
rected to depart out of this Commonwealth before the 10th 
day of October next, as they would avoid the pain and pen- 
alties of the law in that case provided, which was passed by 
the Legislature March 26th, 1788. Charles Bullfinch, Swper- 
intendent, by order and direction of the selectmen. 

This and other similar efforts to get rid of the Ne- 
groes by a policy of intimidation failed of their object, 
however, because they did not after all represent the 
final decision of the community. The more deliberate 
attitude received expression in the report in 1822 of a 
legislative committee appointed the year before to 
draft a bill restricting the admission of free Negroes 
into the state. In submitting that report the chair- 

^ Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor, p. 223, 



28 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

man of the committee, Theodore Lyman, Jr., of Bos- 
ton, first admitted that no doubt the severe "Black 
Laws " of most of the other Northern states were driv- 
ing Negroes into Massachusetts, where they received 
comparatively humane treatment; that his colleagues 
and himself could not but be alarmed by "the increase 
of a species of population, which threatened to be- 
come both injurious and burdensome"; that "the 
black convicts in the State Prison, on the first of Jan- 
uary, 1821, formed 146| part of the black population 
of the State, while the white convicts, at the same time, 
formed but 2140th part of the white population "; and 
that "it is believed a similar proportion will be found 
to exist in all public establishments of this State; as 
well Prisons as Poor-Houses." 

Nevertheless, he stated, his committee had been 
unable to report the repressive measure requested. 
Referring to the law of 1788, he said: — 

This law has never been enforced, and inefifectual as it has 
proved, they [i.e., his committee] would never have been the 
authors of placing among the Statutes a law so arbitrary in 
its principles, and in its operation so little accordant with the 
institutions, feelings, and practices of the people of this 
Commonwealth. The history of that law has well convinced 
the Committee that no measure (which they could devise) 
would be attended with the smallest good consequence. 
That it would have been a matter of satisfaction and con- 
gratulation to the Committee if they had succeeded in 
framing a law, which . . . should have promised to check and 
finally to overcome an evil upon which they have never been 
able to look with unconcern. But a law which should pro- 
duce that effect would entirely depart from that love of hu- 
manity, that respect for hospitality and for the just rights of 
all classes of men, in the constant and successful exercise of 



SLAVE, PATRIOT, AND PIONEER FREEMAN 29 

which the inhabitants of Massachusetts have been sin- 
gularly conspicuous.^ 

That is, — the whites did not like the Negro, they 
looked upon him as an objectionable element in the 
community, and they would have been glad to be rid 
of him. But they could not bring themselves to the 
point of open and avowed persecution. There was the 
same old contradiction between principles and prac- 
tice. There was the same troubling of the Puritan 
conscience. Conscience again prevailed, with the re- 
sult, this time, that Massachusetts left her doors open 
to Negroes seeking refuge from oppression in other 
states. 

While the question of the Negro was thus a subject 
of debate and a cause of more or less uneasiness, it was 
still, however, a question which came up only inter- 
mittently, which on such occasions was discussed with- 
out excitement, and which, furthermore, was regarded 
as predominantly local in its bearings. It neither 
deeply agitated nor seriously divided the community. 
This, in substance, was the situation in Boston at that 
early period, as the first half-century following the 
Declaration of Independence neared its close. 

But an epoch-making advance beyond this largely 
passive attitude was close at hand. 

^ Legislative Report on Free Negroes and Mulattoes, January 16, 
1822. 



CHAPTER II 

A KACE DELIVERED 

Section 1. The Abolition Struggle 

The Abolition Movement arose in Boston, and till 
the end had its moral center in that city. It forced the 
question of the Negro before the community in a way 
that would not down, and which no longer permitted 
its discussion in calmness. It changed that question 
from one of mainly local bearing to one of vital import 
to the nation. It agitated Boston, the North, and the 
whole country, to the foundations. It hastened and 
was, indeed, one of the chief provoking causes of the 
Civil War. And ultimately it accomplished the eradi- 
cation of slavery throughout the reestablished Union. 

The Boston Negro, himself first among his people to 
have experienced freedom, had a specific share in the 
struggle which gave freedom to his brethren. 

Fully to understand this movement which proved so 
far-reaching, it is necessary to trace the previous course 
of public opinion with regard to the institution of slav- 
ery. Though it is doubtful if the sentiment against 
slaveholding reached equal strength elsewhere so soon 
as it did in Boston, the early expressions of such senti- 
ment in New England were not the exclusive nor even 
the original ones. The initial protests representing any 
considerable body of opinion were voiced by the Penn- 
sylvania Quakers, in logical accord with their religion 
of brotherly love, and the earliest anti-slavery society 



A RACE DELIVERED 31 

was organized by them in 1775.^ By the close of the 
Revolution, whose dominant principle of the natural 
rights of man, and whose disenslavement of large num- 
bers of Negroes in compensation for military service, 
entered in as conclusive factors in the result, the 
movement toward emancipation was progressing rap- 
idly in the northern part of the country, and what is 
more, was making steady advance in the South, In 
1787, Congress passed, with slight Southern opposi- 
tion, the famous Northwest Territorial Government 
Ordinance, precluding slavery from the great North- 
west Territory ceded by England, and as yet the only 
addition beyond the thirteen original states.^ Soon 
thereafter societies favoring manumission were formed 
in Maryland and Virginia. In 1794, the advocates of 
emancipation from various parts of the country, South 
as well as North, began to meet frequently in conven- 
tion. Thenceforth, too, the submission to Congress of 
petitions, some seeking the further regulation of the 
slave-trade, others the suppression of slaveholding in 
the District of Columbia, but all of a distinct, though 
limited, anti-slavery character, became increasingly 
frequent. All the Northern states had adopted eman- 
cipation acts by 1804. 

By that time it had come to be assumed in the 
North, and apparently agreed to in the South, that at 
least slavery would not be extended beyond its then 
existing boundaries, and that in every new state 

^ The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slav- 
ery, the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and Im- 
proving the Condition of the African Race. 

^ Comprising the present states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, In- 
diana, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. 



32 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

created from territory outside the original thirteen, it 
would be expressly forbidden. Furthermore, the ma- 
jority opinion in the North was that even in the South 
the institution would eventually come to an end, 
partly through its own gradual decline, and partly 
through federal action. Though it was granted that 
the Federal Government had no constitutional power 
to exclude slavery from any of the original states, it 
was expected that in time a sufficient number of addi- 
tional free states would be admitted to insure the adop- 
tion of a constitutional amendment conferring that 
power. 

Meanwhile, however, had occurred an event, of an 
immediately industrial character, which was speedily 
to reverse and to alter this course of affairs. That 
event was the invention by Eli Whitney, in 1793, of 
the cotton gin. 

Cotton was the South's principal slave product. 
Formerly, it had been necessary to prepare the cotton 
for manufacture, separating the fiber from the seeds, 
either by hand or by clumsy contrivances which im- 
proved but little upon hand labor. Inasmuch as the 
process when thus carried out was exceedingly slow, 
it involved such an amount of slave labor as to leave 
the planter's margin of profit small. Whitney's inven- 
tion effected a revolution. It provided machinery 
which prepared at least a thousand pounds of cotton 
in place of every five or six which had been possible 
before. In 1793, the entire export of cotton from the 
South was 500,000 pounds ; only seven years later, in 
1800, the export to England alone had multiplied to 
16,000,000 pounds. 



A RACE DELIVERED 33 

The basic reason why slavery had previously been 
losing ground in the South was because it had not 
proved a sufficiently paying investment. Following 
the introduction of Whitney's cotton-gin, however, it 
began to yield huge profits. As a result, the South be- 
came commercially wedded to the maintenance of the 
slave system, and Southern talk of emancipation soon 
ceased, except on the part of a small number of reform- 
ers. The South also commenced to show increasing 
resentment toward all Northern discussion of an anti- 
slavery character. Inasmuch, moreover, as North- 
ern textile manufacturers used a large part of the 
supply of raw cotton, the North on its own account 
came to have a considerable commercial interest in 
slavery. This fact worked in the direction of reconcil- 
ing Northern public opinion to the continuance of the 
"peculiar institution," at least for an indefinite period, 
within the Southern states; it still being tacitly as- 
sumed, however, that it would not be extended else- 
where. 

So the matter rested till 1818, when Missouri ap- 
plied for admission to statehood. Then the South 
showed plainly that it was no longer content to have 
slavery let alone where it already existed, but that it 
meant to engraft it upon such new territory as ap- 
peared suitable for its growth. 

Missouri was a part of the Louisiana Purchase, ac- 
quired from France in 1803.^ For that vast tract, 

1 Comprising the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis- 
souri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota 
and the greater part of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, 
and Minnesota. 



84 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

which was still the only annexation besides that of the 
Northwest Territory, already mentioned, no specific 
and decisive action, either permitting or forbidding 
slavery, had yet been taken. The North now proposed 
that the prohibition of slavery be made a condition of 
Missom-i's admission, A majority of her inhabitants, 
however, were Southern emigrants, who wanted to see 
slavery established. The South as a unit showed the 
same intention. The North arrayed itself quite as 
solidly on the side of free soil. Much more was actually 
at stake, be it said, than whether slavery should or 
should not prevail in Missouri, There was the same 
question with reference to the rest of the Louisiana 
Purchase. Furthermore, there was what the South 
held to be the most important question of all : — the 
right of the Federal Government to make admission 
to statehood dependent upon the extraordinary con- 
dition of slavery's exclusion. So the issue was joined, 
for two years contested with increasing bitterness, 
and at last brought to a termination only by a com- 
promise, — the memorable Missouri Compromise of 
1820. By that agreement, Missouri was to be admit- 
ted with no restriction as to slavery. In the re- 
mainder of the Louisiana Purchase, slavery was to 
be allowed in the comparatively small section south 
of latitude 36° 30',^ and to be prohibited in all the 
immense area, except Missouri, lying north of that 
parallel. 

This struggle marked the first open clash, on a na- 
tional scale, between the anti-slavery and the pro- 

* Comprising the present state of Louisiana, and the greater part 
of Arkansas and Oklahoma. 



A RACE DELIVERED 35 

slavery forces. Its results were momentous. It put an 
end once and for all to the complacent belief that there 
was no danger of slavery's extension. It enraged the 
North, which charged the South with having broken 
implicit faith with the nation. It made the South real- 
ize more fully than ever before the strength of Northern 
opposition to slavery. At the same time, by virtue of 
winning Missouri and the region south of 36° 30' 
from the North as slave soil, it engendered in the 
South a fatal confidence in its power to overcome that 
opposition. It gave rise to a consciousness of funda- 
mental and perilous difference and divergence between 
the two sections. In the heat of congressional debate 
and the excitement of popular clamor, prophecies and 
threats of disunion and civil war had in fact been ut- 
tered. Finally, the struggle left neither side satisfied. 
Its net result was simply to leave the question of slav- 
ery in suspense. 

The Compromise did, however, for the time being, 
remove that question from the field of immediate and 
violent contention. After the vent of passion, there 
came, as if half from exhaustion and half from a sense 
of imminent danger in forcing the conflict further, a 
reaction and a lull. Both North and South seemed to 
enter into a mutual conspiracy of silence regarding 
what each recognized as the paramount issue between 
them. In the North, anti-slavery discussion of any 
pronounced character was thereafter looked at 
askance, and agitation was actively discouraged. The 
anti-slavery conventions of Quakers and others, which 
had lapsed from 1808 to 1820 and had then been re- 
vived by the Missouri excitement, were abandoned 



36 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

after 1829.^ The opposition to slavery became quies- 
cent. . 

Such was the situation on the eve of the Abolition 
Movement. 

The Negroes of Boston, interestingly and appropri- 
ately enough, were in a sense this movement's immedi- 
ate forerunners, and one of their number stood in a 
sort of John the Baptist relation to its founder. About 
1826, some of the most progressive Negroes of Boston 
and the state at large organized the General Coloured 
Association of Massachusetts, which had for its pur- 
pose promoting the welfare of the race, principally by 
working for the destruction of slavery. ^ At the Asso- 
ciation's convention in 1828, David Walker, a leader 
among his people in Boston, delivered a stirring anti- 
slavery address, which subsequently appeared in 
"Freedom's Journal," the first Negro paper in the 
United States.* In September of the following year, 
Walker published a booklet of some eighty pages, en- 
titled "An appeal in Four Articles, together with a 
Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but 
in Particular, and very Expressly, to Those of the 
United States of America." It opened thus : "Having 

' Except for a last formal meeting in 1838, by which time this 
earlier anti-slavery movement had been practically absorbed by the 
Abolition Movement proper. For a brief account, with dates, of the 
early movement, see William Lloyd Garrison, the Story of his Life, 
Told by his Children, vol. i, p. 89, footnote. 

^ Some of the Society's more prominent members were Hosea and 
Joshua Easton, John E. Scarlett, Thomas Cole, James G. Barbadoes, 
William G. Nell, Thomas Dalton, John T. Hilton, Fred Brimley, 
CoflHn Pitts, and Walker Lewis. W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the 
Revolution. 

» Published at New York City; W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the 
Revolution. 



A RACE DELIVERED 37 

travellecj over a considerable portion of these United 
States, and having in the course of my travels, taken 
the most accurate observations of things as they exist 
— the result of my observations has warranted the full 
and unshaken conviction that we (Coloured people of 
these United States) are the most degraded, wretched, 
and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world 
began." The author then proceeded to set forth the 
reasons for this unprecedented misery in four "Arti- 
cles," or chapters, and the causes he assigned were: 
first of all, slavery, with its legion of evil consequences; 
second, the Negro's own ignorance; third, the uphold- 
ing of the slave system by so-called Christian ministers; 
and fourth, the colonizing, or Liberian plan, which, by 
its proposal of removing the Negroes to some other 
country, prevented them from feeling that they were 
an integral part of the American nation and from be- 
ing regarded as such by the whites. The language is 
clear and forceful, the argument substantial. The fol- 
lowing passage from the second "Article" is impressive 
not only as being sufficient unto the day and condi- 
tions which called it forth, but as perhaps far antici- 
pating the future: "Your full glory and happiness . . . 
shall never be fully consummated, but with the entire 
emancipation of your enslaved brethren all over the 
world. . . . For I believe it is the will of the Lord that 
our greatest happiness shall consist in working for the 
salvation of our whole body. When this is accom- 
plished a burst of glory will shine upon you, which will 
indeed astonish you and the world." 

The "Appeal" contained also much bitter denunci- 
ation of the slaveowners, together with inflammatory 



38 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

exhortation of the slaves to rise, throw off their bonds, 
and defend themselves against their oppressors. 
Withal, it was the first anti-slavery explosion that 
broke upon the brief period of constrained silence 
following the Missouri Compromise. It passed rap- 
idly through three editions and was read and dis- 
cussed throughout the country. The effect it pro- 
duced in the South was immediate and tumultuous. 
The slaveowners were furious that a Negro, the 
son of a slave, should make this open attack upon 
them.^ The Virginia Legislature passed a special act 
prohibiting the "Appeal's" circulation. The Legis- 
lature of North Carolina went into secret session 
to devise means of counteracting its influence. The 
governor of Georgia wrote to the mayor of Boston 
requesting him to suppress it. The latter replied that 
he should be well enough pleased to do this, but that 
he did not have the necessary legal power. A reward of 
a thousand dollars was offered in the South for Walk- 
er's dead body, and ten times as much for him alive. 
His wife and his friends urged him to go over the bor- 
der into Canada, but he preferred to remain in Boston 
and take his chances. The following year, 1830, he 
died, at the age of thirty -f our. ^ 

' Walker was bom in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1785, the 
child of a free mother and a slave father. As a boy, he had become 
imbued with a violent hatred for the institution of slavery, and had 
left the South and come to Boston, where he applied himself dili- 
gently to study and self-culture. In 1827, he became proprietor of a 
clothing shop on Brattle Street. He was a very generous man, and 
had the name of being always ready to help the poor and needy of 
his race. In many ways he had labored against slavery, but it was 
his "Appeal" which brought him into sudden prominence. 

* For the above and further facts regarding Walker and the Ap- 
peal, see William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, pp. 159-61, 231. 



A RACE DELIVERED 39 

The man who now advanced, to fulfill the mission of 
giving the slaves their freedom, attached so much im- 
portance to Walker's "Appeal" that he characterized 
it as "one of the most remarkable productions of the 
age." ^ It came into his hands shortly after its publica- 
tion, and before he had fully determined upon his own 
course.^ In all probability, it appreciably influenced 
him, and thus bore not only a precedent and perhaps 
prophetic, but in some degree a causative, relation to 
his subsequent crusade. 

This man was William Lloyd Garrison, and the de- 
finitive beginning of the Abolition Movement, as his- 
tory distinguishes it, was the appearance in Boston, 
on January 1, 1831, of the first number of his weekly 
paper, "The Liberator," with this pithy announce- 
ment of the editor's purpose: 

"Assenting to the self-evident truth maintained in 
the American Declaration of Independence, 'that all 
men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights — among which are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' I shall strenu- 
ously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of 
our slave population."' 

On the one side, the Declaration of Independence; 
on the other, slavery: what was this? Nothing more 
and nothing less than the reappearance of that contra- 
diction which from the beginning had been the Neme- 
sis of the Puritan conscience. That conscience had 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 231. 

2 Ibid., vol. I, p. 160. 

' For a brief sketch of Garrison's previous career, and the events 
leading up to his establishment of The Liberator, see Appendix, 
pages 443-46. 



40 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

been compelled to do away with slavery first in Massa- 
chusetts, then in the whole North. Now it was to be 
mercilessly pursued till it should have put an end to 
slavery throughout the nation. 

Immediate freedom for all the slaves, in every state 
and territory of the Union : — that was the new and 
epochal element in Garrison's demand. When he 
raised that demand unequivocally, the North's dor- 
mant hostility to slavery related almost wholly to its 
further extension, and hardly at all to its continued 
existence in the area which it had already occupied. 
The most that earlier anti-slavery sentiment had 
sought was gradual abolition. Neither of these exi- 
gencies had greatly alarmed the slaveholders. The 
one afforded abundant opportunity to compromise, 
the other to temporize. Now, however, the South was 
quick to perceive that once the moral sense of the 
North should respond to the contention that the 
slaves were entitled to freedom forthwith, the institu- 
tion of slavery would be engripped in a struggle for 
life and death. 

A determined moral appeal to the North and the 
turning of this moral power upon the South, through 
every peaceful channel, was what Garrison proposed. 
He did not urge that the federal authorities should at 
once abolish slavery in the Southern States by the use 
of force. He granted that while the National Govern- 
ment could and should prohibit slavery in the territo- 
ries and the District of Columbia, it did not have the 
constitutional power to exclude it from any of the 
states. And being a non-resistant, he was in principle 
opposed to coercion. He uttered the warning, however, 



A RACE DELIVERED 41 

that if the destruction of slavery by peaceful means 
should prove impossible, a bloody war would be inevi- 
table. 

The slow but certain enlargement through the North, 
in the face of apathy and even violent opposition, of the 
movement which Garrison started; the steadily grow- 
ing number of great leaders who enlisted under the 
banner he unfurled, and whose names have rightfully 
taken place beside his own; the many degrees of hos- 
tility to slavery, and the confusing differences over con- 
stitutional and political aspects of the question, which 
ere long divided the Abolitionists into a political -con- 
servative wing that broke away from Garrison, and a 
moral-radical wing that still followed him and contin- 
ued the agitation in its original form to the end; the 
bitter struggles over the admission or exclusion of 
slavery from new territory, which conspired with the 
Abolitionists in forcing the issue unavoidably before 
the nation; the rapid incensement of the South to the 
verge of rebellion; the Union-saving panic which then 
seized the North, aggravating to its maximum the de- 
nunciation of the Abolitionists as enemies of the na- 
tional welfare; the South 's acceptance of the election of 
a Republican President as the virtual triumph of abo- 
lition doctrine; secession; the infuriation of the North 
by the attack upon Fort Sumter ; the outbreak of 
the "irrepressible conflict"; and, at last. President 
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation : — all these 
momentous stages, in the progress toward slavery's 
destruction, necessary limitations of space make it 
impossible here more than barely to suggest. It will be 
necessary from this point to focus attention upon the 



42 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

events of the Abolition struggle in Boston, taking 
account of those in the national arena only so far as 
they particularly influenced, or were particularly influ- 
enced by, the course of affairs in that city. Still more 
especially is it the present purpose to note the part 
taken by the Negroes of Boston. 

The "Liberator" immediately became the object of 
an onslaught of invective from the South and of cen- 
sure in the North. Its suppression by force was urged 
upon the mayor of Boston.^ That official replied that, 
as a result of his inquiries, he found the paper had only 
an "insignificant countenance and support"^ in the 
community, and that it " had not made, nor was likely 
to make, converts among the respectable classes."* 
He said he had "ferreted out the paper and its editor; 
that his office was an obscure hole,^ his only visible 
auxiliary a Negro boy, and his supporters a very few 
insignificant persons of all colors."^ 

One year following the establishment of the "Lib- 
erator," however, these "insignificant persons" took 
the first stride in the Abolition Movement's efiPective 
working organization, by launching the New England 
Anti-Slavery Society. The meeting at which this 

1 Harrison Gray Otis, who was also the one that had been pe- 
titioned to suppress Walker's Appeal. 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 242. 
» Ibid., vol. I. pp. 244-45. 

* This phrase inspired Lowell's poem "To W. L. Garrison", the 
first stanza of which is as follows: — 

" In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 
Toiled o'er his type one poor, unlearned young man ; 
The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean; — 
Yet there the freedom of a race begun." 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 245. 



A RACE DELIVERED 43 

society was formed, on the evening of January 6, 1832, 
took place in the old African Meeting-House, which 
thereby, and also because of its subsequent use for abo- 
lition gatherings, may be said to have become to the 
Negroes in particular the "Cradle of Liberty" which 
Faneuil Hall is to the community at large. Though 
the twelve signatures affixed to the previously drafted 
declaration of principles were those of white men, about 
one quarter of the seventy -two first signers of the con- 
stitution were Negroes.^ 

This society immediately entered upon an aggres- 
sive campaign of agitation. During its first year, it was 
probably responsible for more anti-slavery addresses 
and petitions throughout New England than had 
taken place during the preceding forty years.* It be- 
came the prototype of similar societies which from 
that time forth sprang up in constantly increasing 
numbers all over the North. It is interesting to ob- 
serve in passing that among the specific objects of this 
organization was that of raising funds to establish a 
manual training school for Negro youth.' Even the 
pioneer band of Abolitionists, notwithstanding their 
apostolic zeal for the Negro's abstract rights, recog- 
nized what was to become increasingly obvious as the 
years went by — namely, that practical preparation 
for earning a livelihood had a vital relation to the Ne- 
gro's welfare. Little came of the effort in this direction 
in Boston, however, if indeed any persistent effort was 
made. 

^ For fuller details regarding the society's formation, see William 
Lloyd Garrison, vol. I, pp. 279-82. 

2 Ibid., vol. I, p. 283. » Ibid., vol. i, p. 282. 



44 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The position which the Boston Negroes occupied at 
that period has been described at an earlier point in 
the present narrative. Though they had been free for 
a long time, they were still looked down upon, in com- 
mon with the free Negroes throughout the North, as 
an inferior caste, to whom their liberty was in fact 
more of an evil than a good, and whose lot was if any- 
thing worse than that of the slaves. This despised 
element of the population no one had previously 
thought of addressing as though they had any inde- 
pendent interests of their own, and any importance in 
the affairs of the community. Garrison, however, 
made as direct and full an appeal to them as he did to 
his own race, calling upon them to consecrate them- 
selves to the cause of their brethren's emancipation. 
While striving for the abolition of slavery in the South, 
his own companion purpose was "to elevate our free 
colored population in the scale of society" in the 
North. ^ He advised that class to cultivate self-respect, 
as their good example would break many fetters, and 
their temperance, industry, peaceableness, and piety 
would prove the safety of granting freedom to their 
fellows. They should put their children in school and 
educate themselves; form societies for general im- 
provement, — among the women as well as the men, 
for "no cause can get along without the powerful aid 
of women's influence."; they should put aside jealous- 
ies, support each other in trade dealings, and have 
some sort of national organization. They should 
stoutly maintain all their legal rights, inasmuch as the 
Constitution of the United States made no "invidious 
* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 234. 



A RACE DELIVERED 45 

distinction with regard to the color or condition of free 
inhabitants." Wherever they possessed the franchise 
they should go to the polls, vote for those friendly to 
their cause, and, if possible, for intelligent and respect- 
able men of their own color. They should constantly 
exercise in their own behalf the privilege of petition. 
All thought of leaving America, and colonizing them- 
selves in Africa, Haiti, or elsewhere, should be aban- 
doned. They should once and for all look upon America 
as their country, be patriotic, and observe Independ- 
ence Day with fasting and prayer. Finally, they 
should put their supreme trust in God, for they of all 
peoples "needed the consolations of religion to sustain 
them in their grievous afflictions." " My countrymen 
and friends," he declared, "I have solemnly dedicated 
my health, and strength, and life, to your service. 
I love to plan and to work for your social, intellect- 
ual, political, and spiritual advancement. My hap- 
piness is augmented with yours: in your suflferings 
I participate. ... I believe, as firmly as I do my own 
existence, that the time is not far distant when you and 
the trampled slaves will all be free — free in the spirit 
as well as in the letter — and enjoy the same rights in 
this country as other citizens." The success of their 
cause, he told them, was part of the " signs of the times," 
in harmony with the French and Belgian revolutions, 
the Polish insurrection, the agitation over the Re- 
form Bill in England, and the steps toward emancipa- 
tion of the Negroes in the Danish, Portuguese, French, 
and British colonies. "The whole firmament is tremu- 
lous with an excess of light." ^ 

^ William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, pp. 255-58. The foregoing ex- 



46 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The Boston Negroes responded to this appeal as to 
a "trumpet call."^ For the first time, they felt they 
could draw themselves up to the stature of men. They 
began to express themselves through the columns of the 
"Liberator," of whose supporting corps of subscribers 
they soon came to form a substantial contingent. At 
the outset of the Abolition Movement they neverthe- 
less felt constrained, in view of their previous slight 
association with the whites, to keep for the most part 
by themselves. A Boston committee was appointed 
by the first annual convention of free Negroes, held at 
Philadelphia in June, 1831 — a gathering which was 
addressed by Garrison, and which had in fact been 
brought about as a joint result of his agitation and 
the circulation of Walker's " Appeal. "^ That commit- 
tee had the double function, apparently, of promot- 
ing the welfare of the free Negroes and cooperating 
in the anti-slavery campaign.^ Subsequently, the 
Negroes themselves formed a number of abolition 
societies, which carried on an active propaganda 
among their own people from that time forth.* 

tracts are taken chiefly from Garrison's address before the First 
Annual Convention of Free Colored People, Philadelphia, 1831. 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 233. 

^ This convention was attended by delegates from the five states 
of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. 
Massachusetts, as it happened, was not directly represented. W. C. 
Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 

' The committee consisted of Hosea Easton, Robert Roberts, 
James G. Barbadoes, and the Rev. Samuel Snowden, pastor of the 
Methodist Church on May Street, which had been organized in 1828. 
The latter and the Rev. Thomas Paul, pastor of the African Meet- 
ing-House, were the only Negro ministers in Boston at that time, 
and both were active in the Abolition cause. Ibid. 

* Two of these, for instance, whose names have come dowTi, were 
the African Abolition Free-Hold Society, and the African Female 
Anti-Slavery Society. 



A RACE DELIVERED 47 

But while such separate organization was con- 
tinued for its supplementary value, the Negroes were 
speedily welcomed into close union with the white 
Abolitionists. In January, 1833, the General Coloured 
Association of Massachusetts sought to be affiliated 
with the New England Anti-Slavery Society as an 
auxiliary. Not only was the request cordially granted, 
but a representative of the Negroes was elected to the 
society's board of counselors. Within the next few 
years four more Negroes were placed on that board, 
and two were chosen vice-presidents.^ One of the 
latter, Charles Lenox Remond, also president of the 
Essex County Society, came later to have a prominent 
part in the movement, and was the first Negro to take 
the platform as an anti-slavery speaker. Such fraterni- 
zation, of course, laid the white Abolitionists open to 
severe criticism, even from quarters otherwise inclined 
to be sympathetic. But they did not compromise. At 
the annual meeting of the New England Society in 
January, 1836, the following resolution was adopted: 

Resolved, That we consider the Anti-Slavery cause the 
cause of philanthropy, with regard to which all human beings, 
white men and colored men, men and women, citizens and 
foreigners, have the same duties and the same rights. 

The author of the resolution thus expressed the 
views of his colleagues and himself: — 

We have been advised, if we really wished to benefit the 
slave and the colored race generally, not unnecessarily to 
shock the feelings, though they were but prejudices, of the 
white people, by admitting colored persons to our Anti- 

* For names and other information concerning these Negro 
Abolitionists, see W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 



48 THE NEGRO EN BOSTON 

Slavery meetings and societies. We have been told that 
many who would otherwise act in unison with us were kept 
away by our disregard of the feelings of the community in 
this respect. . . . But what, I would ask, is the great, the 
single object of all our meetings and societies? Have we any 
other object than to impress upon the community this one 
principle, that the colored man is a man? And, on the other 
band, is not the prejudice which would have us exclude col- 
ored people from our meetings and societies the same which, 
in our Southern States, dooms them to perpetual bondage? ^ 

Thenceforth the Negro's participation in the Aboli- 
tion Movement steadily enlarged. Though its generals 
and upper oflScers were, with a few exceptions, of the 
other race, some of the sturdiest of its second lieuten- 
ants and corporals, as well as the most devoted body 
of its privates in the ranks, were of the lowly people 
whom it was to raise to the free estate of manhood. 
The Negro's unflinching loyalty was an ever-present 
consolation and support to Garrison and his co-labor- 
ers, "outweighing mountains of abuse from other 
sources."^ 

In December, 1833, through Garrison's initiative, 
the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society 
was effected at an assemblage in Philadelphia, at- 
tended by representatives of ten states. One of 
Boston's six delegates was a Negro. ^ This national 
organization united all the anti-slavery agencies 
throughout the North in a common crusade.* With 
this measure of expansion, however, came a still larger 

1 W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 255. 

' James G. Barbadoes. William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i, p. 395, 
footnote. 

* With headquarters at New York, and an oflScial publication 
called the Emancipator. 



A RACE DELIVERED 49 

measure of persecution. One of the chief methods by 
which the Abolitionists now undertook to exert " moral 
pressure" consisted of flooding the South with their 
papers and tracts. Southerners condemned this as an 
outrageous piece of insolence, and as a covert design 
to incite the slaves to insurrection. They denounced 
the "unprincipled fanatics," who were interfering with 
their "domestic policy," and warned the North to 
silence them, lest the Union be imperiled. The cry of 
danger to the Union, thus raised for the first time since 
the bitter Missouri controversy, produced in Boston, 
as elsewhere, a wave of indignation against the Aboli- 
tionists, as alleged mischief-makers. A great anti- 
Abolitionist mass meeting was held in Faneuil Hall on 
the evening of August 21, 1835, and was presided over 
by the same Theodore Lyman, Jr., now in the capacity 
of mayor, who thirteen years before, in the State Legis- 
lature, had bespoken a show of humanity toward the 
Negroes. But the Abolitionists had gone insufferably 
beyond his degree of humanity! Resolutions were 
adopted expressing Boston's sympathy with the South- 
ern protests, belittling the number and importance of 
the agitators, and recommending the discouragement 
of their activity by all legal and orderly means. 

An omen that the public animosity might get be- 
yond the bounds of order, however, was afforded soon 
afterwards in the nocturnal erection in front of Gar- 
rison's house of a gallows with two nooses, one for 
himself and the other for George Thompson, an Eng- 
lish lecturer in the anti-slavery cause, and the object 
of special objurgation as a "foreign emissary." This 
omen came true. On October 21, a mob — if that is 



50 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

not too crude a term to apply to a gathering composed 
in fact of the thoroughly respectable element ! — as- 
sembled before a building where an anti-slavery meet- 
ing, at which Thompson was mistakenly supposed to 
be present, was in progress. The mob shouted to have 
Thompson delivered over to them for chastisement. 
Mayor Lyman then appeared, announced that Thomp- 
son was not there, and in a timid and perfunctory way 
asked his fellow-citizens to disperse. But the disap- 
pointment at not catching Thompson only made the 
rioters more clamorous. As it happened, the "Libera- 
tor" oflfice was next door. So they set up a yell for 
Garrison. The latter, reluctantly and only upon the 
insistence of those in the office with him at the time, 
had taken refuge in another building near by. In 
spite of the mayor's feeble protestations, he was 
hunted out, and but for the unexpected intervention 
of several strong-armed protectors, would doubtless 
have suffered serious injury. As it was, he was hustled 
to the rear of the Old State House, and there gibed, 
insulted, and partly stripped of his clothing; and was 
rescued only by being rushed into the mayor's office 
and thence hurried away to a cell in the jail, for safety 
till the excitement subsided. 

An undercurrent of sympathy for the Abolitionists, 
however, followed in the wake of this abuse of them, 
which in fact overreached itself. At the same time an 
anti-Southern reaction was taking place in the North. 
It had its rise in the feeling that the South, for its own 
sectional advantage, was demanding too great a sac- 
rifice of fundamental national principles : — the free- 
dom of the mails, liberty of speech and publication. 



A RACE DELIVERED 51 

and, most trying of all, the cherished right of peti- 
tion. That right became an issue as a result of the 
second leading means utilized by the Abolitionists in 
bringing moral influence to bear; namely, the peti- 
tioning of Congress to abolish slavery in the ter- 
ritories and the District of Columbia. In 1835, a 
Southern Congressman moved that thenceforth such 
petitions should not be received. After a prolonged 
and heated debate in the following year, the South 
was placated, while infringement of the right to peti- 
tion was nominally avoided, by the decision to lay all 
anti-slavery petitions on the table and to take no 
further action upon them. This notorious "gag rule" 
served only to spur the Abolitionists to greater activity, 
and by 1838 the number of petitions increased ten- 
fold. Two years later a rule not to receive such peti- 
tions at all was forced through Congress. But South- 
ern encroachment had gone too far, and in 1844 the 
restrictions which had been imposed were removed. 
Meanwhile, the North had become alarmed at the 
actual and imminent extension of slavery into new 
soil. In 1836, Arkansas was admitted as a slave state. 
The plot for the annexation of Texas, which had been 
colonized largely by Southern slaveholding emigrants, 
was already being hatched, and the contingency of a 
war with Mexico, bringing still further additions to 
slavery's area, was foreseen.^ Under these conditions 
Northern anti-slavery sentiment was revived, and grew 
apace. 

The Abolitionists profited by this change of feeling, 

^ In 1836, Texas revolted from Mexico and became an independ- 
ent republic. 



52 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

which, while still far from reaching their own extreme 
attitude, was surely tending in their direction. From 
1840 on, though differences and division entered 
their ranks, the progress of their cause as a whole was 
rapid; and though public hostility to their agitation 
remained suflBciently in evidence and was to have its 
further eruptions, still from that time forth they were 
borne up by a consciousness that they were moving 
with the tide rather than struggling against it. 

An event from which the Abolition Movement de- 
rived a broader moral confirmation was the assembling 
of a World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London in 
1840, at which representatives from the British Isles, 
the Continental countries, and other quarters of the 
globe, joined with those of the United States in a 
common appeal against slavery wherever it was still 
in existence. This convention proved equally memora- 
ble, moreover, by reason of an unforeseen by -result. 
Among the American delegates from Boston and 
elsewhere were a considerable number of women, for 
whose full participation in abolition activities Garrison 
had stood out determinedly. But in England at that 
time such equal recognition of women was unknown. 
All the female delegates, therefore, though the creden- 
tials they held from their respective societies were as 
formal and complete as those of the men, were ex- 
cluded. When Garrison, who arrived some days late, 
learned of this action, he felt obliged to refuse to take 
any part in the proceedings himself; — "to the great 
scandal" of the gathering, "for what sort of a World's 
Convention was it in which the founder of the greatest 
anti-slavery movement of the age, or of any age, was 



A RACE DELIVERED 53 

debarred from taking his seat?"^ The whole episode 
aroused so much feeling, pro and con, and led to so 
much debate on the general question of the position of 
women in affairs, that it is regarded as marking the 
decisive beginning, both in the United States and in 
England, of the movement for woman suffrage.^ That 
such should have been the genesis of the demand for 
the civil and political equality of the sexes introduces 
another of those strikingly suggestive inter-relations 
between the emancipation of the Negro and other 
great human advances toward freedom's fuller reali- 
zation. 

Not a few Negroes were sent as delegates to the 
London Convention.^ Of these, Charles Lenox 
Remond, whose early connection with abolition events 
has been mentioned, had the most noteworthy experi- 
ence. On the voyage — the captain of the ship being a 
Virginian — he was consigned to the steerage. His 
reception in England, however, was in marked con- 
trast. "Our colored friend Remond invariably accom- 
panies us," wrote Garrison, "and is a great favorite in 
every circle.^ . . . Prejudice against color is unknown 
here."^ Not only was he much in demand as a speaker 
at public meetings, but he was warmly received and 
made much of by many persons of high rank. His stay 
was prolonged to a year and a half, and he traveled in 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. On his return, in 
December, 1841, he brought with him a remarkable 
document, — an "Address from the Irish People to 

^ William Lloyd Garrison, vol. ii, p. 374. 

* Ibid., vol. n, p. 381, footnote. » 7^,^., vol. 11, p. 353. 

* Ibid., vol. II, p. 388. b /^j^/.^ yyi. ^^ p, 333. 



54 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America."^ 
Sixty thousand names, ^ with that of Daniel O'Connell 
at the head, were appended to this monster memorial, 
which called upon Irish-Americans to treat the Ne- 
groes as brethren, and to unite everywhere with the 
Abolitionists. It was expected that the appeal would 
have substantial results, but that hope was not ful- 
filled. 

Meanwhile, another Negro Abolitionist, the most 
remarkable of them all, had made his appearance. 
This was Frederick Douglass, who only a few years 
before had escaped from slavery in Maryland.^ He 
became a reader of the "Liberator," and soon after- 
wards, at a meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 
where he had taken refuge, he heard Garrison speak. 
How he was affected he himself has told: '"You are 
the man — the Moses raised up by God to deliver his 
modern Israel from bondage,' was the spontaneous 
feeling of my heart as I sat away back in the hall and 
listened to his mighty words — mighty in truth, 
mighty in their simple earnestness."^ Garrison did 
not become acquainted with Douglass then, — in fact, 
did not even know of his existence. But in 1841, at 
another meeting in Nantucket, the two men came to- 
gether. Douglass had been induced to tell the story 
of his slave days and his escape. It was the first time 

1 William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iti, p. 43 ct seq. 

"^ Presumably including those of grandparents and parents of 
some of the members of Boston's present large Irish- American popu- 
lation. 

' The escape was made in 1838. 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. ii, p. 292. The date of the meeting 
was April 15, 1839. 



A RACE DELIVERED 55 

he had spoken before a white audience. " It was with 
difficulty that I could stand erect," he wrote after- 
wards, "or that I could command and articulate two 
words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled 
in every limb. I am not sure but that my embarrass- 
ment was the most effective part of my speech, if 
speech it could be called. . . . The audience sympa- 
thized with me at once, and, from having been re- 
markably quiet, became much excited."^ 

What followed, another eyewitness has narrated : — 

When the young man [Douglass] closed, late in the evening, 
though none seemed to know or care for the hour, Mr. Garri- 
son rose to make the concluding address. I think he never 
before nor afterwards felt more profoundly the sacredness of 
his mission, or the importance of a crisis. . . . The crowded 
congregation had been wrought up almost to enchantment 
during the whole long evening, particularly by some of the 
utterances of the last speaker, as he turned over the terrible 
apocalypse of his experiences in slavery. But Mr. Garrison 
was singularly serene and calm. . . . He asked only a few 
simple, direct questions. . . . The first was: "Have we been 
listening to a thing, a piece of property, or a man?" "A 
man! A man!" shouted fully five hundred voices of women 
and men. "And should such a man be held a slave in a re- 
publican and Christian land.^*" "No, no! Never, never!" 
again swelled up from the same voices, like the billows of the 
deep. But the last [question] was this: "Shall such a man 
ever be sent back to slavery from the soil of old Massachu- 
setts?" — this time uttered with all the power of voice of 
which Garrison was capable. Almost the whole assembly 
sprang with one accord to their feet, and the walls and roof 
of the Athenaeum seemed to shudder with the "No, no!" 
loud and long continued in the enthusiasm of the scene.^ 

^ William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iii, pp. 18-19. 
* From an account by Parker Pillsbury, a leading Boston Aboli- 
tionist, William Lloyd Garrison, vol. in, p. 19. 



56 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Douglass, at Garrison's instance, was at once se- 
cured as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society, and in this capacity he traveled and lectured 
in the New England States for the next four years. 
His "Narrative of my Experience in Slavery," pub- 
lished in Boston in 1844, did much to further the aboli- 
tion cause. In 1845, he went to Europe, and spent two 
years in the British Isles making anti-slavery addresses. 
He proved the most eloquent and powerful apostle of 
freedom that his race produced, and in virtue of his 
long and brilliant career came generally to be regarded 
as the foremost representative of his people.^ 

A third Negro recruit at this juncture, who quickly 
rose to prominence, was William Wells Brown. He, 
too, was an escaped slave. ^ He came to Boston about 
1845, and soon took an active part in the Abolitionist 
agitation, as a speaker and writer. His first book, the 
"Narrative of W. W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave," ap- 
peared in 1847, and his second, "The Anti-Slavery 
Harp," a collection of songs and verses, in 1848. Both 
had a wide circulation. In 1849, Brown visited Eng- 
land and the Continent, in the dual capacity of delegate 
to a congress on international peace and representative 
of the Abolitionists.^ 

^ Douglas died in 1895, at the age of seventy-eight. 

^ He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, of a slave woman, Elisa- 
beth, who was the mother of seven children, no two of whom — such 
were the contingencies in the lives of female slaves — had the same 
father. William escaped from a boat at Louisville, Kentucky, when 
twenty-one years old, and was helped in his flight by a Quaker, 
William Wells, who gave the young man his own name. He secured 
employment on a Lake Erie steamboat, and from May to December, 
1842, assisted sixty-nine fugitives to cross the Lake into Canada. 
Ifarrative of W. W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. 

' His experiences were described in his third book, Three Years in 



A RACE DELIVERED 67 

Douglass and Brown were but two very exceptional 
cases of the runaway slaves who sought refuge in 
Boston, and whose number increased rapidly after 
1840. This city was of course one of the principal 
stations of the celebrated "Underground Railway," 
by which slaves were mysteriously conveyed, stage by 
stage, to points of comparative safety in the Northern 
states, or across the line into Canada.^ Those who 
came to Boston were hidden and cared for by the 
Abolitionists, and chiefly by the Negro contingent.^ 
The secret councils, to devise ways and means of pro- 
tection and general assistance, were most frequently 
held at the shops or homes of Negroes. A barber shop 
of one Peter Howard, situated at the corner of Cam- 
bridge and Irving Streets, in the West End, was an 
early rendezvous. Later on, one of the favorite gather- 
ing-places was another barber shop, on the corner of 
Howard and Bulfinch Streets in the same section, of 
which the proprietor was John J. Smith, a free Negro 
from Richmond, Virginia.^ The most popular resort 
of all, however, as well as one of the chief places of 
concealment for runaways, was the home of Lewis 

Europe, published in 1852. Then came Clotel, in 1852; St. Domingo, 
in 1854; The Fugitive in Europe, in 1855; and The Escape, in 1858. 
Other books were published after the War. 

^ See Wilbur H. Siebert, Light on the Underground Railway. 

^ Eliza Gardner, one of the few members of Boston's present 
Negro colony whose memory goes back to those days, recalls that 
her father's little cottage often sheltered as many fugitives as it 
could hold, and that the situation was the same in many other 
Negro homes. 

^ Smith came to Boston in 1848. It is said that when Charles 
Sumner, the noted Senator and Abolitionist, could not be found 
at his home or office, he could usually be located at Smith's 
shop. 



58 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Hayden,^ who came to Boston as a fugitive from 
Kentucky in 1844, and who by virtue of his native 
strength of character soon became, and remained till 
his death, a dominating figure in the local Negro 
colony. 2 

Several of the most famous fugitive slave cases oc- 
curred in Boston. The first of them all was the Lati- 
mer case of 1842. By way of preface, it should be said 
that the question of fugitive slaves had been more or 
less troublesome ever since slavery's disappearance in 
the North, but had become acute with the growth of the 
Abolition Movement. The federal laws were entirely 
in favor of the slave-owners. They required but little 
evidence in support of alleged ownership of a runaway, 
and made the rendition of the slave obligatory not 
only upon federal but also upon state officials. The 
North grew to resent this compulsion, and began to take 
the attitude that its state officials were not constitu- 
tionally subject to such federal control. That was the 
contention of the Abolitionists in Boston when the 
Latimer case arose. 

George Latimer, a fine-looking man, almost white 
in complexion and at least half-white in blood, es- 
caped to Boston from Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife 
and child. On the complaint of his owner he was ar- 
rested without a warrant, put in jail, and remanded 
for trial without a jury before a federal court, on the 
ground that only federal courts had jurisdiction. The 
Abolitionists at once called a meeting in Faneuil Hall. 
Many of the pro-Southern element, however, were 

* On Philips (then Southac) Street, in the West End. 
2 Hayden died in 1889. 



A RACE DELIVERED 69 

present, and by their disturbance did their utmost to 
break the meeting up. Remond especially was hissed 
and hooted when he tried to speak. Nevertheless reso- 
lutions were adopted, denouncing the fugitive slave 
laws and calling for counter-legislation by the state. 
Following this action, the illegality of Latimer's con- 
finement in jail was established to the satisfaction of 
the county sheriff, with the result that he was re- 
leased. In the confused debate over the affair he 
would probably have gone scot free anyway, but as it 
was, he and his family were ransomed with funds con- 
tributed from philanthropic sources.^ 

The Abolitionists made the most of the public in- 
dignation which this case aroused. " Latimer meetings" 
were held throughout the state, A "North Star and 
Latimer's Journal," issued every other day from 
Boston, fired the excitement. Then a Latimer and 
Grand Massachusetts Petition, calling for the pro- 
hibition of state or municipal assistance in the return 
of fugitives, was submitted to the State Legislature.^ 
So successful was this agitation that the following 
year, 1843, the Legislature passed a personal liberty 
act, which forbade state judges or justices to take part 
in the capture of fugitive slaves, and enjoined sheriffs, 
jailers, and constables from detaining them. This 
was an extremely radical piece of legislation, and its 
adoption shows the advanced stage which the anti- 
slavery feeling had reached. It was the first law of that 
character. Other Northern States soon followed Mass- 

^ For a more detailed account, see William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 
Ill, pp. 66-67, footnote. 

2 Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 67, footnote. 



60 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

achusetts* lead. Slave-hunters found it increasingly 
difficult to recapture the runaways. The South re- 
newed its threats of secession. 

Then came the short-lived Compromise of 1850, by 
which, in return for the admission of California as a 
free state, and certain other "concessions," the North 
was forced to consent to the enactment of the notori- 
ous Fugitive Slave Law.^ That law went beyond all 
former bounds. The entire federal machinery, from 
courts to army, was enjoined for its execution, and a 
large force of special marshals and commissioners 
appointed. The marshals were liable to a fine of $1000, 
plus the value of the slave, if the latter escaped or 
even if he were forcibly rescued. Bystanders were 
guilty of treason in refusing to assist. The claimant's 
oath was full evidence, the alleged fugitive was shut 
out from all defense, and the right of habeas corpus 
denied him. Obstruction, rescue, or concealment was 
punishable by six months imprisonment and $2000 
fine. If the claimant suspected an attempt to rescue 
the slave, the marshal must take the latter to the 
claimant's own state before surrendering him. Finally, 
an affidavit and general description made in the 
claimant's state was sufficient for reclamation in any 
other state. 

Never were expected effect and actual effect of a 
law more opposite. The enactment which the South 
confidently believed would force the North into sub- 
mission had the result instead of goading the North to 
fury. Undoubtedly, this was the element which defin- 

^ California was part of the territory acquired in 1848 as a result 
of the war with Mexico. 



A RACE DELIVERED 61 

itely decided the trend of events toward civil war. 
In Boston, the excitement was intense. The passage of 
the law was immediately followed by an exodus north- 
ward, usually to Canada, of escaped slaves who had 
taken refuge in the "border" states, and even of those 
who had got as far north as New England. Well know- 
ing that Boston would be the slave-hunters' chief 
point of attack, most of the refugees who were abiding 
in that city joined in the common flight.^ Vigilance 
committees were at once organized to assist the fugi- 
tives. The Negroes, at a meeting at the Old Joy 
Street church,^ determined if necessary to offer armed 
resistance. The first encounter came in 1850 over two 
celebrated fugitives, the Crafts, the Georgia agents in 
pursuit of whom were foiled by their being spirited off 
to England.^ In February, 1851, occurred the sensa- 

* Fifteen families from Boston joined the refugee colony estab- 
lished at Biddulph, near Little York, Canada, by J. C. Brown, a 
Negro who had purchased his own freedom for $1800. Booker T. 
Washington, The Story of the Negro, vol. i, p. 227. 

2 As the African Meeting-House had by that time come to be 
known. 

* Ellen Craft, being almost white in complexion, disguised her- 
self as an invalid going North for medical treatment, with her darker 
husband (William) passing as her Negro servant. Thus they 
traveled openly in first-class conveyances from Georgia to Phila- 
delphia, and thence made their way to Boston, where they figured in 
a great Faneuil Hall mass meeting in 1849. William Lloyd Garrison, 
vol. Ill, page 247. After the war, the Crafts returned to America. 
For some time they lived at Cambridge, where their children were 
educated, and then they went back to their native state, Georgia, 
where they passed their old age in a comfortable home near Sa- 
vannah. One of the sons is now living in England, and a daughter 
is the wife of the late W. D. Crum, who was collector of customs at 
Charleston, South Carolina, under President Roosevelt, and subse- 
quently United States Minister to Liberia, in which country he 
met his death from fever. A grandson, Henry K. Craft, graduated 



6£ THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tional "rescue" of Shadrach. This runaway slave's 
case was being heard in the courtroom, before a fed- 
eral commissioner, and a decision practically remand- 
ing him to bondage had been given — when a Negro 
lawyer, Robert Morris, and a number of others, mostly 
of the same race, compassed his escape. How it was 
done has been told by an eyewitness : ^ — 

Scarcely was the decision announced when the courtroom 
door was opened by Mr. Morris and a signal given to the 
crowd . . . who filled the corridor, anxiously waiting the re- 
sult of the hearing. The uncontrollable mass swarmed in, 
heedless of all attempts of the officers to keep them back; the 
genial deputy marshal took refuge under the table, and 
with a suddenness and a fervor which might almost be com- 
pared to the chariot of fire that swept away the prophet 
Elijah, Shadrach, enveloped in the cloud which darkened the 
whole room, disappeared from the view of those who claimed 
to own him, and was next heard of in Canada. 

The leaders in this affair were indicted by a federal 
grand jury, but were triumphantly acquitted, for lack 
of sufficiently tangible evidence of guilt. ^ 

The surcharged conditions which prevailed at that 
time were vividly portrayed in a letter written by one 
of the foremost of the Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips : ' 

from Harvard University in 1908, and is now in charge of the electri- 
cal plant and the teaching of electrical engineering at Tuskegee In- 
stitute. Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro, vol. i, p. 230. 

' Thomas Harlow, a leading member of the Suffolk Bar at that 
time. 

^ Those indicted included Morris, Lewis Hayden, and other 
Negroes, and also Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, and Richard 
H. Dana, Jr. Colored American Magazine, September 1901, article 
on Robert Morris. Henry Clay was especially horrified because this 
escape had been effected by " a band who are not of our own people " 
thus raising the question "whether the government of white men is 
to be yielded to a government of blacks." William Lloyd Garrisov, 
vol. Ill, p. 326, footnote. 

« In March, 1851. 



A RACE DELIVERED 63 

In Boston, all is activity — never before so much since I 
knew the cause. The rescue of Shadrach has set the whole 
public ablaze. I had an old woman of seventy ask my advice 
about flying, though originally free and fearful only of being 
caught up by mistake. Of course, in one so old and valueless 
there was no temptation to mistake, but in others it is horri- 
ble to see the distress of families torn apart at this inclement 
season, the working head forced to leave good employment 
and seek not employment so much as the chance of it in the 
narrow, unenterprising and overstocked markets of Canada. 
Our Vigilance Committee meets every night. The escapes 
have been providential. Since Shadrach's case nigh a hun- 
dred have left the city. ... I need not enlarge on this; but 
the long evening sessions — debates about secret escapes — 
plans to evade where we can't resist — the door watched 
that no spy may enter — the whispered consultations of the 
morning — some putting property out of their hands, plan- 
ning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in case of con- 
viction, the Government may get nothing from them — the 
doing and answering no questions — intimates forbearing to 
ask the knowledge which it may be dangerous to have — ■ 
all reminds one of those foreign scenes which have hitherto 
been known to us, transatlantic republicans, only in books. 

So things continued, and public feeling grew con- 
stantly more inflamed, till on May 26, 1854, it passed 
all previous limits and broke out in open armed attack 
upon the Government authorities which were execut- 
ing the rendition of Anthony Burns. The latter had 
been arrested as a fugitive slave two days before. Im- 
mediately the popular excitement mounted to fever 
pitch. The ensuing week is said to have been without 
a parallel in Boston since the days of the Revolution. 
The Abolitionists, the woman suffragists, and several 
other organizations were holding their anniversary 
meetings, and the city was thus crowded with visitors. 
Also, from the country roundabout, even as far as 



64 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Worcester, forty miles away, men poured in for the 
express purpose of thwarting the slave-hunters. A 
call was issued for volunteers to rescue Burns, at the 
risk of death if need be, and among the large number 
who responded were many Negroes. On the evening of 
the 26th, a great anti-slavery mass meeting was held 
at Faneuil Hall, and Abolitionist orators made im- 
passioned speeches. As that meeting broke up, a part 
of the crowd, by prearrangement, rushed to the court- 
house where Burns was held a prisoner, and using a 
beam as a battering-ram, broke down one of the doors 
and surged in. They were finally driven back, how- 
ever, though one of the deputy marshals was killed in 
the melee. All the military forces within reach were 
at once concentrated to prevent a second attack. A 
few days later the victim was delivered over to his 
master, and amid tumultuous counter-demonstrations, 
was borne down State Street between armed files to 
the point of embarkation,^ 

This local incident, combined with the enraged 
outcry throughout the North against the simultaneous 
action of Congress in opening Kansas and Nebraska 
as fighting ground for slavery, gave the Abolitionists, 
for the time, almost complete control of the situation. ^ 

1 The Rev. Leonard A. Grimes, pastor of the (Negro) Twelfth 
Baptist Church, and a very active anti-slavery worker, followed 
Burns and his captors, and with funds which had been provided for 
the purpose, succeeded in purchasing his freedom ; — for, once the 
slaveholders had compelled his rendition, they had gained their 
most important object, and were more than willing to be rid of one 
who might cause them further trouble. Burns subsequently became 
a minister of the Gospel. 

2 The so-called Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 22, 1854, was 
forced through Congress by the South, and, though both these 



A RACE DELIVERED 65 

Going further than they had ever dared to go before, 
they demanded and in the spring of 1855 obtained 
from the Legislature a drastic extension of the state's 
personal liberty law. Claimants of runaway slaves 
were thenceforth required to give full proof of owner- 
ship, and a fair trial was assured to the fugitives. For 
a state officer to issue a warrant for a slave's arrest 
was made a cause for his removal. For an attorney to 
assist the claimant was equivalent to his disbarment. 
For a state judge to help the slave-hunters rendered 
him liable to impeachment. No sheriff, jailer, or 
policeman could help arrest a runaway, and no jail 
could receive him. These provisions put so many ob- 
stacles in the way of a slave's recapture as practically 
to nullify the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, so 
far as Massachusetts was concerned. The reclamation 
of runaways who took refuge in that state was, indeed, 
from this time next to impossible. The South stormed 
against such obstruction as an insufferable defiance 
of the Constitution, and its threats of secession grew 
still louder. 

The first act of secession was now in fact close at 
hand. The Republican victory at the polls in 1860 
was the signal for it. Though that newly -born party, 
formed in 1856 by a coalition of the Whigs, Free- 
Soilers, Northern Democrats, and other elements, was 

territories were in the free-soil zone, as being north of the Mis- 
souri Compromise line of 36° 30', left the question of slavery 
within their borders to be decided by their inhabitants. The South 
was sure that in Kansas slavery would be firmly established. Con- 
trary to expectation, however, and owing largely to the organization 
of emigrant aid societies, great numbers of Northerners settled in 
that territory, armed conflict with the slaveholding settlers ensued, 
and the forces of freedom were victorious, j 



06 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

actually so timorous in its attitude toward slavery as 
to incur the bitter condemnation of the Abolitionists, 
it was of course the party of the North as opposed to 
the displaced Democracy of the South. ^ At any rate, 
the South, doubtless making up in prevision what it 
lacked in logic, chose to regard Republican triumph as 
tantamount to the North's indorsement of abolition- 
ism. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina set the 
fatal example to her sister states, by withdrawing 
from the Union. The ordinance by which this action 
was taken, recited, as grounds for it, that the non- 
slaveholding states had "denounced as sinful the insti- 
tution of slavery," "permitted the open establishment 
... of societies whose avowed object is to disturb 
the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens 
of other states," had "encouraged and assisted thous- 
ands of our slaves to leave their homes," and had incited 
the rest, "by emissaries, books, and pictures," to 
"servile insurrection." "For twenty-five years," it 
charged, "this agitation has been steadily increasing, 
until it has now secured to its aid the power of the com- 
mon Government."^ In other words, the Abolition 
Movement was declared to be the cause of secession. 
Now a Union-saving panic seized the North. Des- 
perate attempts were made to stay the South. Con- 
ciliation, concession, and subserviency stopped short 
of no extreme. The Abolitionists were made the 
scrapegoats. Once more — though not for long, and 

* The Republican platform came out only against the doctrine, 
enunciated in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, that the Constitutioa 
carried slavery into the territories, and against the suggested re- 
opening of the slave-trade. On the other hand, it made many con- 
cessions to the South. 

2 William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iii, pp. 506, 507. 



A RACE DELIVERED 67 

for the last time — they had to sufifer as the victims 
of public abuse and popular passion. In Boston, in 
January, 1861, rioters forced an anti-slavery meeting 
in Tremont Temple to adjourn, and the mayor re- 
fused to allow it to reassemble.^ 

But then, in April, came the Southern attack upon 
and capture of Fort Sumter, and the hauling down of 
the Stars and Stripes from its ramparts. This event 
was expected to complete the intimidation and de- 
moralization of the North. But never was there a 
more electrical transformation. There burst forth "a 
whirlwind of patriotism that swept all before it," and 
"such an uprising in every city, town, and hamlet of 
the North, without distinction of sect or party, as to 
seem like a general resurrection from the dead." " The 
day following Sumter's fall. President Lincoln issued 
the call for troops.^ The "irrepressible conflict" had 
come at last. 

The purpose of the war, however, was not to destroy 
slavery, but to suppress the rebellion. President 
Lincoln at once made that manifest beyond possible 
doubt. Nor did he stop there. However deep was his 
own antipathy toward slavery, he felt still more deeply 
that as head of the nation his one supreme duty was 
to do everything in his power to preserve the Union. 
He therefore made it plain also that if this paramount 
object could be achieved by consenting to the continu- 
ance of slavery, such consent would be given. First 
before the actual clash at arms, and then for nearly 
two years afterwards, every opportunity, every in- 

1 William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, pp. 5-7. 
« Ibid., vol. IV, p. 19. 3 April 15. 



68 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ducement, was held out to the South to return to the 
old allegiance, with her "domestic institution" un- 
touched. Lincoln's attitude was that of the great 
majority of the North. "The Union!" was every- 
thing. It seemed as though the Negro's freedom 
might after all be offered up in sacrifice. 

The Negro's champions, however, knew that the 
logic of the situation was with them. For though 
secession was the immediate occasion of the conflict, 
slavery was without question its fundamental cause. 
And though the restoration of the Union was its pro- 
fessed object, how could durable union possibly be re- 
established, except by doing away with the element of 
inevitable contention? So the Abolitionists set them- 
selves determinedly to their final task of committing 
the Government to slavery's destruction. They in- 
voked the President and Congress to use their war 
power to proclaim emancipation. The "Liberator" 
and all the other anti-slavery journals made that de- 
mand their shibboleth. Abolition meetings were held 
on every hand. The orators of the cause, with Wendell 
Phillips at their head, exerted all their eloquence. 
Resolutions, petitions, and memorials without number 
were poured into Washington, and deputation upon 
deputation was sent to the Capitol and the White 
House. The President's evident willingness to con- 
ciliate the South by yielding on slavery, and his ap- 
parent hesitancy and vacillation even after all hope of 
conciliation had been practically abandoned, were 
censured unsparingly. "To refuse to deliver those 
captive millions who are now legally in your power," 
declared Garrison in an editorial addressed to the 



A RACE DELIVERED 69 

President and his Cabinet, "is tantamount to the 
crime of their original enslavement."^ In a great 
meeting at Boston, prophetic application was made of 
the Scriptural text: "Therefore thus saith the Lord; 
Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, 
every one to his brother, and every man to his neigh- 
bour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the 
Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the fam- 
ine."^ And the Negroes in their churches and in their 
homes fervently prayed that victory should be with- 
held from the Union arms till the slaves were set free. 

The military exigencies of the war, as well as Lin- 
coln's own inmost convictions, were on the Abolition- 
ists' side. At last, in September, 1862, the President 
announced that on the first day of the new year he 
would issue an edict of freedom to the slaves in all 
states or parts of states still in rebellion against the 
Federal Government. 

In Boston, that New Year's Day was one of joyful 
thanksgiving and celebration.^ Two great gatherings 
were held; one at the Old Music Hall, in the afternoon, 
and the other in Tremont Temple, through the whole 
day and evening. Inspiring music — including Mendels- 
sohn's "Hymn of Praise" and Handel's "Hallelujah 
Chorus" — and the reading by Ralph Waldo Emerson 
of a poem which he had written for the occasion,'* 

^ William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, p. 35. 

^ Jeremiah, xxxiv, 17. William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, p. 20. 
' Solemn services had taken place the evening before in all the 
Negro churches. 

* The Boston Hymn. Greatest applause greeted the stanza refer- 
ring to the proposal of compensated emancipation: — 
" Pay ransom to the owner. 
And fill the bag to the brim. 
Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, 
And ever was. Pay him ! " 



70 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

were the features of the afternoon meeting. At first 
there was painful suspense, mingled with vague fear, 
for the reason that no tidings of the Proclamation had 
yet been received. When this suspense was relieved, 
however, by the announcement that the text of that 
edict was coming over the wires, the gathering broke 
into a storm of applause, culminating in nine tremend- 
ous cheers for Lincoln, and three more for Garrison. 
Still more memorable was the concluding evening 
session in the Temple. This was in charge of the 
Negroes themselves, and two of the speakers — John 
S. Rock, a lawyer distinguished for his eloquence, and 
the renowned Frederick Douglass — were of the race 
to whom that day brought promise of deliverance.^ 
The climax of enthusiasm came when, a few minutes 
after nine o'clock, one of the Abolitionists rushed in, 
breathless, with a newspaper proof-sheet — which he 
had contrived to get into his hands and to make off 
with before he could be stopped ! — of the Proclama- 
tion. First amid hushed silence, then with outbursts 
of applause, this was read:^ from the beginning, "Now, 
therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
States," through the central clause, "do order and de- 
clare that all persons held as slaves . . . are and here- 
after shall be free," to the solemn conclusion, "And 
upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, 
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, 
I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and 

^ The other speakers were Edward Atkinson, Anna E. Dickinson, 
and Charles W. Slack. 

^ As the newspapeps did not publish the proclamation till the fol- 
lowing day this was probably the first time it was read anywhere in 
the country outside of Washington. 



A RACE DELIVERED 71 

the gracious favor of Almighty God." While shouts 
and cheers filled the hall, Douglass — a man of noble 
mien and figure — advanced to the front of the plat- 
form, with a gesture brought the multitude to their 
feet, and led them in singing, with fervor unrestrained, 
the old hymn, "Blow ye the trumpet, blow!" 

" Let all the nations know 
To earth's remotest bounds 
The year of jubilee has come." 

The meeting then ended, but the Negroes thronged to 
their churches for services of prayer and praise that 
lasted far into the night. ^ 

Surely it was a striking and appropriate coincidence, 
if nothing more, that as the first step in the Abolition 
Movement's working organization, — namely, the 
formation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 
— was taken in a Negro church, so the concluding 
celebration of that movement's crowning achievement, 
and the first reading of the immortal Proclamation in 
Boston, should have occurred at a gathering under the 
auspices of the Negro people; and that the spontane- 
ous psean of victory on that occasion should have been 
raised by one of that race who in his own life experi- 
ence embodied the rise from slavery to freedom. 

The cause of the Union and the cause of the Negro's 
liberty were now one and inseparable. But the ulti- 
mate triumph or defeat of this double mission was en- 
trusted to the soldier in the battlefield. There the 
Negro was to have a vital part. 

* The foregoing account of the celebrations is based on an article, 
"Emancipation Day in Boston, 1863," by Francis Jackson Garri- 
son, which appeared in the New York Evening Post, Dec. 28, 1912. 



72 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Section 2. The War 

When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, 
the military situation was critical for the North, The 
Union forces had been repulsed at Fredericksburg and 
at Vicksburg, and had fought the battle of Stone 
River at tremendous cost. Some sixty-five thousand 
troops were due to be discharged during the ensuing 
summer and fall. Volunteering was at a standstill. 
The political opposition to the war had grown formida- 
ble, and the advocates of peace at any price were ac- 
tive for mediation and compromise. The Confederates, 
on the other hand, had filled their ranks, and were 
never better prepared for keeping up the conflict. 

In the face of this crisis, the Government decided 
upon a general arming of the Negroes, in separate 
regiments, under white officers.^ Emancipation of the 
slaves in the rebellious states, opening the way for 
their enlistment in the Federal ranks, was thus in 
truth a measure of "military necessity." 

The first body of Negro troops organized after the 
adoption of this policy was the Fifty-fourth Massachu- 
setts. The unique significance which attached to that 
regiment was emphasized in a letter written to the 
father of Robert Gould Shaw, its young colonel, by 
the famous Abolitionist " War Governor" of the State, 
John A. Andrew : — 

* This decision was tentatively arrived at in October, 1862, 
Though three scattered Negro regiments had already been organ- 
ized, — the First Kansas Colored, in the summer of that year; the 
Louisiana Native Guards, in September; and the First South Carol- 
ina, in October, — the enlistment of Negroes on a large scale and as 
a general policy had not previously been undertaken. Luis F. 
Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment, 



A RACE DELIVERED 73 

As you have seen by the newspapers, I am about to raise a 
colored regiment in Massachusetts. This I cannot but re- 
gard as perhaps the most important corps to be organized 
during the whole war, in view of what must be the composi- 
tion of our new levies; and therefore I am very anxious to 
organize it judiciously, in order that it may be a model for all 
future colored regiments. I am desirous to have for its offi- 
cers — particularly for its field-officers — young men of 
military experience,of firm anti-slavery principles, ambitious, 
superior to a vulgar contempt for color, and having faith in 
the capacity of colored men for military service. Such offi- 
cers must necessarily be gentlemen of the highest tone and 
honor; and I shall look for them in those circles of educated 
anti-slavery society which, next to the colored race itself, 
have the greatest interest in this experiment.^ 

Recruiting was begun February 16, 1863, in quart- 
ers situated in the midst of the West End Negro 
colony.^ That evening a meeting to arouse enthusi- 
asm was held in the old Joy Street church. Enlistment 
followed immediately, and camp was established at 
Readville, near Boston. Soon many additional re- 
cruiting offices were opened, not only at other points 
in Massachusetts, but throughout the Eastern and 
Middle Western states. Frederick Douglass, William 
Wells Brown, Charles Lenox Remond, Lewis Hayden, 
John S. Rock, and other Negroes served as general 
recruiting agents. Within three months, the enroll- 
ment of the necessary number of volunteers was com- 
pleted. 

On May 18, Governor Andrew, in the presence of 
Garrison and Wendell Phillips, delivered the state and 

^ Letter written January 30, 1863, to Francis G. Shaw. Luis F. 
Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment. 

^ At the corner of Cambridge and North Russell Streets, on the 
site now occupied by the Negro Odd Fellows Hall. 



74 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

national colors to Colonel Shaw, at the Readville 
camp, with the declaration that he should "stand or 
fall, as a man and a magistrate, with the rise or fall in 
history" of those Negro troops. Ten days later he re- 
viewed the regiment as it marched through the streets 
of Boston, displaying a soldierly discipline and bear- 
ing unsurpassed by any other regiment Massachusetts 
had sent to the war, and receiving enthusiastic greet- 
ings from the crowds assembled all along the route and 
about the wharf, where it embarked for the South. ^ 

Meanwhile the organization of the state's second 
Negro battalion, the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, which 
was commanded by Colonel Hallowell, of Boston,^ 
and in which one of Garrison's sons was a second 
lieutenant,^ had been proceeding rapidly. On July 21, 
that regiment took its departure for the field of war, 
but under somewhat different circumstances. Anti- 
Negro riots were being stirred up by the pro-Southern 
("Copperhead") element in various Northern cities, 
and such an outburst was feared in Boston. For this 
reason, no dress parade was held in the case of the 
Fifty-fifth, which made its way to the pier with loaded 
muskets, ready for a possible attack.^ The Fifth Cav- 
alry, the third and last body of Negro soldiers from 
Massachusetts, took the field in May of the following 
year. 

Not only in these three Massachusetts regiments, 
but in others organized under the auspices of other 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol iv, p. 81. 

^ Still living in a suburb of Boston in his strong old age, and still 
the Nej^ro's loyal friend. 
' George T. Garrison. 

* William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, pp. 82-83. 



A RACE DELIVERED 75 

states, and also in the navy, Negroes from Boston and 
the immediate vicinity enlisted; and altogether five 
hundred or more entered the Union ranks. ^ The pa- 
triotism and bravery of these Negro soldiers and their 
white officers were the greater, because the Confed- 
erates had served warning that they would enslave all 
the Negroes taken captive, and would put the officers 
to death as leaders of servile insurrection. In spite, 
however, of this special risk which was required, the 
Government at first allowed the Negro troops only the 
wages of military "laborers," instead of the full pay of 
soldiers. With remarkable spirit and fortitude, and at 
the cost of severe hardship to their families, the men 
of the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth refused to receive any 
payment at all until their claim to the full amount was 
at last recognized.^ This dignified stand did much 
to raise the Negro to a higher place in the esteem of 
the general public. 

1 How many of the 1343 men of the Fifty-fourth were from 
Boston cannot be exactly determined, but it may be assumed that 
most of the fifty or more volunteers at the Boston office, during the 
first fortnight of recruiting, and some of those who enlisted else- 
where after the Boston office was closed, were from Boston and 
vicinity. In the Fifty-fifth there were at least eighty men from 
Boston. Adding the still larger number in the Fifth Cavalry, and 
a considerable proportion of the 1954 Negro soldiers from Mass- 
achusetts in other regiments and of the 1360 enlistments at the 
Charlestown Navy Yard, it would appear that the total from 
Boston must have been five hundred or more, as above stated. 

^ The pay of "laborers" was ten dollars a month, that of soldiers 
thirteen dollars. Congress eventually voted full pay to all Negro 
soldiers from January 1, 1864; and in the case of the Fifty-fourth and 
Fifty-fifth, by a subsequent decision of the Attorney-General, the 
full amount was allowed from the time of enlistment. The soldiers 
of these regiments meanwhile declined to let Massachusetts make up 
the amount withheld by the Government. William Lloyd Garrison, 
vol. IV, p. 96, footnote. 



76 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The Fifth Cavalry was organized too late to take 
part in any of the heavy fighting, though it was present 
at the final closing in on Richmond. The Fifty-fifth 
acquitted itself valiantly, particularly in the famous 
battle of Honey Hill, in South Carolina, where it bore 
the brunt of the conflict and by its determined resist- 
ance in the face of the enemy's advance saved large 
numbers of the white troops from annihilation. But 
it was the Fifty-fourth which — as though in fulfill- 
ment of a high destiny as the first Negro regiment to 
take up arms after the proclamation of the Negro's 
freedom, and as the body of soldiers to which all who 
believed in the Negro's worth looked to justify their 
faith — won glory above that of any other Negro 
battalion of the war, and displayed heroism unsur- 
passed by any other troops, of either race. The occa- 
sion at which this fame was achieved was that of the 
assault upon Fort Wagner, in South Carolina, on July 
18, 1863. 

"To the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored was 
assigned the honor of leading the attack, and after the 
troops were formed on the beach, ready for the assault, 
the order to advance was withheld until the Fifty- 
fourth could march by and take position at the head 
of the column."^ And this is the account, from the pen 
of an eyewitness, of what followed : — 

When the inaction had become almost unendurable, the 
signal to advance came. Colonel Shaw walked along the 
front to the centre, and giving the command, "Attention!" 
the men sprang to their feet. Then came the admonition, 

1 William F. Fox, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A., Regimental Losses 
in the Civil War. 



A RACE DELIVERED 77 

"Move in quick time until within a hundred yards of the 
fort; then double-quick; and charge!" A slight pause, fol- 
lowed by the sharp command, "Forward!" and the Fifty- 
fourth advanced to the storming. . . . Darkness was rapidly 
coming on. . . . With eyes strained upon the colonel and the 
flag, they pressed on toward the work, now only two hun- 
dred yards away. At that moment Wagner became a mound 
of fire, from which poured a stream of shot and shell. . . . 
Men fell in numbers on every side, but the only response the 
Fifty-fourth made to the deadly challenge was to change 
step to the double-quick, that it might the sooner close with 
the foe. ... As the swifter pace was taken, and officers 
sprang to the fore with waving swords barely seen in the 
darkness, the men closed the gaps, and with set jaws, pant- 
ing breath, and bowed heads, charged on. . . . Every flash 
showed the ground dotted with killed or wounded. . . . No- 
thing but the ditch now separated the stormers and the foe. 
Down into this they went, through the two or three feet of 
water therein, and mounted the slope beyond in the teeth of 
the enemy; some of whom, standing on the crest, fired down 
on them. Both flags were planted on the parapet, the national 
flag carried there and gallantly maintained by the brave 
Sergeant William H. Carney of Company C.^ . . . Colonel 
Shaw had led his regiment from first to last. Gaining the 
rampart, he stood there for a moment with uplifted sword, 
shouting, "Forward, Fifty-fourth!" and then fell dead, shot 
through the heart. ^ 

Though the stormers were at last forced back and 
the assault failed, for lack of proper support of the 
splendid charge of the Negro troops, and because of 

1 Sergeant Carney was from New Bedford, Massachusetts. He 
planted the flag on the parapet of the fort, and in the retreat, though 
wounded in the head and shoulder and both legs, he bore it back to 
the Union lines and handed it over with the words which made him 
famous: "They got me, boys, but the old flag never touched the 
ground." After the war, Carney lived in Boston, and some years 
later was appointed to the position of messenger to the Massa- 
chusetts Secretary of State. In December, 1908, he was crushed in 
an elevator accident. On the day of his death, the flags on the 
State House were lowered to halfmast. 

2 Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment, p. 79 et seq. 



78 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the overwhelming numbers defending the fort, it was 
one of those failures which go down in history as great 
moral victories for the vanquished. The sacrifice was 
heavy ; besides Colonel Shaw, 2 officers and 31 men 
killed, 11 officers and 135 men wounded, and 92 re- 
ported missing — either killed or captured — out of a 
total of 650 engaged.^ 

When the Fifty-fourth returned to Boston, in Sep- 
tember, 1865, it received a remarkable ovation. "The 
demonstrations of respect were rather more than have 
usually been awarded to returning regiments, even 
in Massachusetts, which cherishes her soldiers with 
an unforgetting affection. They were so honored in 
this case, we presume, because the regiment is a repre- 
sentative one. There were regiments from that state 
which had seen more fighting than this, though none 
which had done any better fighting when occasion 
offered; none which had a higher reputation for disci- 
pline, patient endurance, and impetuous valor. . . . 
It made Fort Wagner such a name to the colored race 
as Bunker Hill has been for ninety years to the white 
Yankees. . . . The name of Colonel Robert Gould 
Shaw is forever linked with that of the regiment which 
he first commanded, and which he inspired with so 
much of his own gentle and noble spirit as to make it a 
perpetual legacy to the men who fought under and 
loved him."^ 

On the battlefield before Fort Wagner, the body of 
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw lies buried in the same 
trench with the bodies of a score of the Negroes of the 

* Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment. 

* Extract from editorial which appeared in the New York Tribune 
at the time. 



A RACE DELIVERED 79 

regiment. At the northwest corner of the Boston Com- 
mon, opposite the State House, stands the Robert 
Gould Shaw Memorial, erected by citizens of the state 
in honor of the Fifty-fourth. No monument in the 
city is visited more frequently. The sculptural design 
is the work of Saint-Gaudens, who gave twelve years 
of thought to the task. The architectural construction 
was planned by Charles F. McKim, of the firm of 
McKim, Mead, and White. On the side facing the 
Capitol is represented, in raised bronze figures on a 
great tablet, the regiment on the march, with Colonel 
Shaw in advance and an angel close overhead leading 
the way. On the reverse side is cut in the stone this 
inscription, the words those of Dr. Charles W. Eliot, 
then president of Harvard University : ^ — 

TO_THE FIFTY-FOURTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 

REaMENT INFANTRY 

I THE WHITE OFFICERS' 

TAKING LIFE AND HONOR IN THEIR HANDS-^CAST IN THEIR LOT WITH MEN OF 

A DESPISED RACE UNPROVED IN WAR AND RISKED DEATH AS INCITERS OF 

SERVILE INSURRECTION IF TAKEN PRISONERS ^ BESIDES ENCOUNTERING 

ALL THE COA/UWON PERILS OF CAMP MARCH AND BATTLE* 



THE BLACK RANK AND FILE 

/VOLUNTEERED WHEN DISASTER CLOUDED THE UNION CAUSE*5ERVED' 

WITHOUT PAY FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS TILL GIVEN THAT OF WHITE TROOPS* 

FACED THREATENED ENSLAVEMENT IF CAPTURED->WERE BRAVE IN ACTION* 

.PATIENT UNDER HEAVY AND DANGEROUS LABORS^AND CHEERFUL AMID 

HARDSHIPS AND PRIVATIONS- 



TOGETHER 

THEY GAVE TO THE NATION AND THE WORLD UNDYING PROOF THAT 

AMERICANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT POSSESS THE PRIDE COURAGE AND 

DEVOTION OF THE PATRIOT SOLDIER •* ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY 

THOUSAND SUCH AMERICANS ENUSTED UNDER THE UNION FLAG INj 

M^D-CCCLXin ->M*D-.CCCLXV 

* The monument was erected in 1897. 



80 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The Union was saved, and in every state in the 
Union slavery was destroyed. Boston, the city where 
in the days of the Republic's dawn the slave first at- 
tained his liberty, and where a half-century after- 
wards the determined movement for his nation-wide 
emancipation had its rise, was by the results of 1865 
fully confirmed in history as the birthplace of the 
Negro's freedom. 

And what of the Negro himself? As he had re- 
sponded with ready patriotism to his country's call in 
the War for American' Independence, so likewise did he 
respond again in the War for the Preservation of the 
Union. His part in the establishment of the nation 
had been substantial. His part in saving the nation 
from being rent in twain was vital. For, in view of 
the military crisis which had arisen at the time when 
emancipation was proclaimed, it must be regarded as in 
all probability the fact, that without the one hundred 
and eighty thousand Negro volunteers who came to 
the rescue the Union forces could not have won the 
victory. Union defeat would have meant slavery's 
indefinite continuance. Thus, while by his part in the 
Revolution the Negro had contributed to his conse- 
quent emancipation throughout the North, by his 
part in the Civil War he himself proved the decisive 
factor in the establishment of his freedom throughout 
the nation. 



CHAPTER III 

EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 

At the conclusion of the war, a number of factors 
combined in making public sentiment in the North 
vastly more favorable to the Negro than it had ever 
been before. 

The admirable manner in which the Negro troops 
had acquitted themselves compelled both respect and 
gratitude. The noteworthy part which the Negroes 
had taken in the anti-slavery campaign, especially as 
speakers on public platforms, and the marked progress 
they had made during the same period, raised them 
appreciably in popular estimation. The zeal of the 
Abolitionists, moreover, had modified somewhat the 
attitude of the community at large. In consequence 
of the North's responsibility for emancipation, there 
was also a recognition of obligation toward the Negro, 
and a sincere intention to offer him a helping hand in 
his newborn freedom. Elation over the victory of the 
Union arms induced a super-normal state of mind, 
among whose characteristics were a prevailing optim- 
ism and magnanimity, that included the Negro in their 
generous scope. 

In Boston, these influences, of course, reached their 
maximum. Among the radical Abolitionist element, 
there was the utmost enthusiasm for the Negro. 
Among a much larger proportion of the community, 
which might be described as near-Abolitionist in its 



82 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

views, there was genuine friendliness. In the case of 
the rank and file, inherited antipathy was at least 
softened to the extent that it did not express itself in 
active resistance to endeavors in the Negro's behalf. 
The Negroes themselves had, in the course of the 
struggle against slavery, and in fact as its collateral 
result, experienced a deep and general awakening. 
This new impulse had taken on greater strength in 
Boston than it had anywhere else. It had manifested 
itself in a degree of individual and collective progress 
much greater than would otherwise have taken place; 
and, still more directly, in efforts to obtain larger 
opportunities and a position of increased respect in the 
community.^ Exceptional men and women of the race, 
to some of whom previous reference has been made, 
had forced their way upward to places unheard of be- 
fore. Several pioneer Negro lawyers had been admitted 
to the bar, and several physicians to standard medical 
practice. A group of noteworthy authors had emerged. 
An artist had won a reputation. These attainments 
by individuals were but the most conspicuous points, 
moreover, in a notable advance by the Negro popula- 
tion as a whole. Above the level of menial and com- 
mon labor, a sufficient number of skilled mechanics 
to form the nucleus of a middle industrial class had 
obtained a foothold. Business proprietorships had 
undergone a marked growth as respects both number 
and size. The leading catering establishment of the 
city, and two of the best private gymnasiums, were 

1 For a fuller account of the advance of the Negroes during the 
period 1830-65, with details of the matters briefly noted in the two 
paragraphs following the above, see Appendix, pp. 44G-53. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 83 

conducted by Negroes. The most remarkable case in 
this field was that of a bootblack who became proprie- 
tor of a clothing shop and at his death left an estate of 
$50,000. Ownership of homestead property had in- 
creased from almost zero to a substantial total. ^ The 
Negro churches had multiplied from one to five, and 
half a dozen new lodges and beneficial societies had 
been established. 

Evidence of the Negroes' budding pride in their 
part in the nation's history had appeared in a petition 
submitted by them, which requested the erection of a 
memorial to Crispus Attucks, the hero of the Boston 
Massacre. An aroused purpose to take fuller advan- 
tage of the community's cultural opportunities had 
been signified by the formation of a library association, 
which served successfully the double function of en- 
couraging the members of this race to take up reading 
and study for self -improvement, while at the same time 
gradually paving the way for their use of the Public 
Library, and their attendance at lectures and enter- 
tainments, with immunity from openly contemptuous 
treatment on the part of the whites. The point at 
which the Negroes had shown their new spirit most 
directly and plainly, however, was in a complete 
change of attitude on the school question. In earlier 
years, it will be recalled, they had themselves be- 
sought and finally prevailed upon the city to establish 
separate schools, on the ground that their children 
were ridiculed and abused by the white children. But 
early in the Abolitionist campaign, they had begun to 
petition the municipal and state authorities to do 
» Estimated in 1855 at $200,000. 



84 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

away with those separate schools, on the ground that 
such segregation constituted objectionable and un- 
fair discrimination. So persistently had they pressed 
their demand that in 1855 they had succeeded in ob- 
taining the passage of a state law, forbidding thence- 
forth any distinction on account of race or color with 
respect to school attendance. That victory was the 
cause of great rejoicing. 

To the Negroes in this aroused condition resulting 
from the Abolition Movement, the Emancipation 
Proclamation had appeared as the hand of Providence, 
extended to raise them from their depths. The war, to 
their vision, was a mighty struggle ordained for their 
deliverance. The valor of the soldiers of their own 
race had thrilled them with the consciousness of recog- 
nized manhood, courage, and patriotism. And at last 
the triumph of the North, bringing the certainty of 
their elevation to the estate of free men, was to them 
the Divine fulfillment of their entrance into the prom- 
ised land. No wonder that when the war was over, the 
Negroes, especially in Boston, Anti-slavery's source 
and center, were in a state of accumulated emotion 
which bordered on spiritual exaltation. 

The majority of Negro leaders of the Abolition 
period were still alive and active, with ardor and de- 
votion magnified. Younger men and women, who had 
not taken so prominent a part before the war, now 
joined hands with the elders. Strong immediate rein- 
forcement from without was provided in the persons 
of several capable veterans of the battlefield, who 
took up their abode in Boston as soon as peace re- 
turned. Subsequently, the ranks were augmented by 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 85 

other newcomers. The group thus constituted exer- 
cised leadership under the new order. ^ 

The mass of the race were aglow with the first infu- 
sion of the spirit of freedom. Two purely local factors 
which contributed to their exhilaration were those of 
concentration in one district and rapid increase of 
numbers. The movement into the West End, the de- 
velopment of which as early as 1820 has already been 
noted, had gone on, till within a decade or two there- 
after practically all the Negroes in the city were 
gathered in that section, in a single compact colony. 
The growth of consciousness of kind and sense of com- 
munity was thereby greatly furthered. During the 
troublous times of the anti-slavery struggle and the 
war, the net increase in the Negro population was not 
large; — from 1875 persons in 1830, to 2348, in 1865. 
But immediately following the war, a veritable tidal 
wave of immigration set in. This sudden and sustained 
influx brought the mutual assurance which springs from 
numbers. The bulk of the newcomers, furthermore, 
were former slaves from the South, who were filled 
with wonder and unbounded hope in their new life. 

Under these auspicious conditions, the Negroes in 
Boston joined with those of the other race who had 
their welfare at heart, for the common purpose of se- 
curing to the Negro people, in the South and through- 
out the nation, the full fruits of the Emancipation 
Proclamation and of the victory of the Union arms. The 
Proclamation, as a war measure, had been confined to 
the states or parts of states still in rebellion at the 

^ For names and other information concerning the most promi- 
nent members of this group of leaders, see Appendix, pp. 453-56. 



86. THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

time it was issued. It had not applied to the loyal 
states of Maryland and Missouri, where slavery was 
left undisturbed/ nor to certain Southern districts un- 
der military occupation by the Federal troops, where 
the slave system continued to have a legal existence. 
Neither had the Proclamation forbidden the re estab- 
lishment of slavery, or settled the question of the 
Negro's future status. It remained, therefore, to com- 
plete slavery's eradication, and to bestow upon the 
Negroes throughout the Union the rights of free citi- 
zenship, including the franchise. These results were to 
be accomplished by federal legislation, in the form of 
amendments to the Constitution so far as such funda- 
mental enactments should prove necessary. 

Boston continued to be the center of activity in the 
Negro's behalf. The effort in this direction no longer 
had to expend itself to any appreciable degree in con- 
verting local sentiment. It was now focused almost 
entirely upon Congress, the National Administration, 
and the inner councils of the fully empowered Repub- 
lican party. There was little relaxation in the cam- 
paign of public meetings and addresses, petitions and 
delegations. As for the Negroes themselves, though, 
of course, their direct influence in determining the 
action of the Government was subordinate, their zeal 
surpassed even that which they had manifested during 

1 Both these states, however, abolished slavery by amendments 
to their constitutions before the war ended. Maryland took this 
action in October, 1864, and Missouri in January, 1865. One of the 
chief factors in the remarkably speedy conversion of Maryland was 
the perception by the poor whites that freeing the slaves and allow- 
ing them to enlist would aid wonderfully in filling the state's quota 
of soldiers, and so would relieve these poor whites themselves from 
entering the army. William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, p. 119, footnotec 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 87 

the anti-slavery struggle. By still further enlisting pub- 
lic sympathy, and by demonstrating the reality and 
earnestness of their own desire for a higher place in the 
nation, they contributed very considerably to the re- 
sults obtained. 

The first proposed federal enactment was the 
Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery through- 
out the nation and prohibiting it for all time. This 
amendment was looked upon as a matter of course, 
and encountered practically no opposition. Its pas- 
sage through the House of Representatives was ob- 
served in Boston, that same day, by a salute of a 
hundred guns on the Common, and by the ringing of 
church bells all over the state. ^ The amendment was 
ratified by the requisite number of states and declared 
a part of the Constitution in December, 1865, eight 
and a half months after the close of the war. Its sig- 
nificance was thus expressed by Garrison in the next 
to the last number of the "Liberator": — 

At last, the old "covenant with death" and "agreement 
with hell" no longer stands. Not a slave is left to clank his 
fetters, of the million that were lately held in seemingly 
hopeless bondage. Not a slaveholder may dare to present 
his claim of property in man, or assume the prerogative of 
trafficking in human flesh and blood. ... It is not merely 
the abolition of slavery, with the old recognized right of 
each state to establish the system ad libitum, but it is the 
prohibition by "the Supreme law of the land," duly ratified, 
to enslave a human being in any part of our national 
domains, or to restore what has been overthrown. It is, 
consequently, the complete triumph of the anti-slavery 
struggle, as such.'^ 

» January 31, 1865. 

* WiUiam Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, pp. 167-68. 



88 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

On the point, however, of whether or not the time 
had arrived for the dissolution of the anti-slavery 
societies, a disagreement had meanwhile arisen in the 
Abolitionist ranks. The matter had come up first at 
the meeting of the Massachusetts society in Boston in 
the preceding January, and was carried over to the 
convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society at 
New York in May. Garrison was for disbandment, 
on the ground that the ratification of the Thirteenth 
Amendment being assured, the specific task of abolish- 
ing slavery was accomplished. He did not contemplate 
any abatement whatever of the endeavor in the Negro's 
behalf, but believed it more fitting that thenceforth 
the Abolitionists should "mingle with the millions of 
their fellow-countrymen in one common effort to es- 
tablish justice and liberty throughout the land." 
Wendell Phillips took the opposed stand, contending 
that the existing organization should be kept up until 
the Negro was granted the franchise and the states 
were prohibited from enacting laws making any dis- 
tinction among their citizens on account of race or 
color. The great majority of the members, as well as 
Douglass, Remond, and most of the other Negro lead- 
ers, proved to be of the latter conviction, evidently 
fearing that dissolution at that juncture might im- 
peril the Negro's fortunes. Garrison, who was then in 
his sixtieth year and whose health had been broken by 
the long struggle, withdrew from formal connection 
with the anti-slavery societies, and brought the "Lib- 
erator" to a close the last week of that year.^ Thence- 
forth, his service in the Negro's cause was rendered as 
1 1865. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 89 

speaker and writer at large. The leadership within 
the Abolitionist ranks during the remaining period of 
organization passed over to Phillips.^ 

The question of giving the Negroes the franchise 
was the next one which demanded settlement. At 
first, there was some doubt about taking this action. 
It was not, like the abolition of slavery, a measure 
which had practical application only to the South ; for 
outside of New England, and including Connecticut 
within that section, all the other Northern States still 
either withheld the ballot from the Negro entirely, or 
restricted its extension to him by educational and 
property qualifications. Indeed, Connecticut, in the 
autumn of 1865, refused to pass a law enfranchising 
Negroes, and the new State of Colorado excluded 
them from the suffrage. Discussion of the matter was 
brought to a head around the case of Louisiana, which 
was the first Confederate state to be put in readiness 
for admission to the Union, and which, in its proposed 
constitution, did not give the vote to the Negroes. 
President Lincoln was willing to readmit Louisiana on 
this basis, though he suggested extending the ballot to 
such Negroes as had borne arms for the Union or were 
sufficiently qualified by intelligence. For adopting 
this attitude he was severely rebuked by the Abolition- 
ists, with the notable exception of Garrison. The 
latter, though he came out squarely for the adoption of 
a constitutional amendment enfranchising the Negroes, 

^ For a detailed account of the foregoing differences, see William 
Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, pp. 153-62. The anti-slavery organization 
was continued till April, 1870, or until after the ratification of the 
Fifteenth Amendment. Phillips was born in Boston in 1811. 



90 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

favored accomplishing this purpose in as regular and 
conciliatory a manner as possible. He vividly foresaw, 
moreover, the diflBculties which the Negro's previous 
status put in the way of making his right to the ballot 
efiFective in fact, as well as obligatory in law, in the 
South.^ Though the majority of Northerners were 

^ In a letter to an English critic of the President, who condemned 
the latter for not enfranchising the Negroes in Louisiana by exercise 
of his war powers. Garrison expressed himself as follows: — 

"By what political precedent or administrative policy, in any 
country, could he have been justified if he had attempted to do this? 
When was it ever known that liberation from bondage was accom- 
panied by a recognition of political equality? . . . According to the 
laws of development and progress, it is not practicable. . . . Nor, 
if the freed blacks were admitted to the polls by presidential fiat, 
do I see any permanent advantage likely to be secured from it; for 
as soon as the state was organized and left to manage its own afifairs, 
the white population, with their superior intelligence, wealth, and 
power, would unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with 
their prejudices, . . . Coercion would gain nothing. In other words 
. . . universal suffrage will be hard to win and to hold without a 
general preparation of feeling and sentiment. ... It will come only 
by a struggle on the part of the disfranchised and a growing conviction 
of its justice. . . . With the abolition of slavery in the South, preju- 
dice or 'colorphobia,' the natural product of the system, will gradu- 
ally disappear, as in the case of your West India colonies, and black 
men will win their way to wealth, distinction, eminence, and ofBcial 
station." William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, pp. 123-24. 

Referring to Garrison's position on this matter, another English- 
man wrote to one of the former's sons, in later years: "I regarded 
your father as a man of noble nature, but with concentrated views — 
I do not say 'narrow,' because they were as wide as a race and in- 
cluded their emancipation. But in his reply to there was that 

largeness of view and recognition of outside difficulties which we call 
the statesmanlike quality of mind." Ibid., p. 120, footnote. 

Accepting the foregoing expression on Garrison's part at its face 
value, one might find some difficulty in reconciling it with his advo- 
cacy of enfranchisement of the Negroes by a constitutional amend- 
ment. Evidently he thought that the ratification of an amendment 
would imply Southern acquiescence and believed that only a brief 
time would be required for prejudice to disappear from the South. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 91 

rather loath to accept the general principle of Negro 
suffrage, the feeling steadily gained ground that it 
would be necessary to safeguard the rights of the 
freedmen before any of the Southern States were re- 
admitted. The Republican party, including even its 
most conservative elements, steadily gravitated to- 
ward this position as an obligation of political faith. 

As a result, Congress passed in April, 1866, over 
President Johnson's veto, the Civil Rights Act, which 
provided that the Negroes were to be recognized as 
citizens of the United States, with all the privileges of 
citizenship, including the right to vote; and which 
made violation of these provisions a misdemeanor to 
be dealt with by the federal courts. Debate over the 
constitutionality of this act, however, led to the fram- 
ing of the Fourteenth Amendment, which passed both 
branches of Congress on June 13, 1866, and by July 28, 
1868, was ratified by the requisite two thirds of the 
states. This amendment bestowed citizenship, with 
all its privileges and immunities, upon the Negroes, 
provided that any state which denied or in any way 
abridged the right to vote should have its representa- 
tion in Congress reduced, prohibited persons who had 
taken part in the rebellion from holding oflSce, and re- 
pudiated the Southern debt. 

Of course, this enactment had to be forced down 
the throat of the South, To accomplish that result 
was largely the purpose of the Reconstruction Act, 
passed in March, 1867, by Congress, which had by 
that time completely broken with the President.^ The 

1 President Johnson, who had as Vice-President succeeded Lincoln 
after the latter's assassination on April 14, 1865, set out to follow his 



92 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

former Confederate region was divided into five mili- 
tary districts, under the command of generals of the 
army, who were to direct a registration of voters 
which should Include Negroes and shut out ex-Con- 
federates. These voters were to elect conventions, in 
the former state areas, and the conventions in turn 
were to adopt constitutions, which, if acceptable to 
Congress, were to qualify the state for readmission as 
soon as it had agreed to the Fourteenth Amendment. 
This Act initiated the ill-fraught Reconstruction 
regime, under which the Southern State Governments 
passed into the hands of a sorry combination of un- 
scrupulous white politicians from the North — the so- 
called "carpetbaggers"^ — and the Negroes them- 
selves. 

The conditions which ensued proved so unbearable 
to the South as to incite the desperate retaliatory 
campaign of intimidation of the notorious "Ku-Klux 
Clan." For a time there was a veritable reign of terror, 
partly as a result of which the Southern whites suc- 
ceeded in many sections in preventing the Negroes 
from voting, and in getting themselves back into con- 
trol. A federal order aimed to destroy the Ku-Klux 
Clan was issued in 1869, and on May 31, 1870, and 
April 20, 1871, the two "force bills," designed to sup- 
predecessor's policy of not insisting upon unrestricted suffrage for 
the Negro, but readmitting the Southern States with a minimum of 
deLay and disturbance. Congress utterly opposed this plan, and took 
the situation into its own hands. The impeachment of the President 
followed in 1868, but ended with his acquittal. 

' This epithet arose from the South's contemptuous report that 
the white politicians brought all their worldly belongings along 
with them in a Yankee carpetbag. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 93 

press this and ^11 similar conspiracies against the civil 
rights of the Negroes, were passed. Though these 
measures were effective in breaking up the Ku-Klux 
organization, it proved to be too late, as will subse- 
quently appear, to repress the uprising of the white 
South against Negro domination. Inasmuch as the 
Fourteenth Amendment, though imposing what was 
expected to be a prohibitive penalty, had not actually 
forbidden withholding the ballot from the Negroes, 
it was now deemed necessary to enact the Fifteenth 
Amendment, which declared that "the right of citi- 
zens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or 
abridged by the United States, or by any State, on 
account of race, color, or previous condition of servi- 
tude." That amendment was passed by Congress in 
February, 1869, and declared ratified in March, 1870. 

Thus, so far as lay in the power of the Constitution, 
the Negro, who but a few years previous had been a 
slave, was now raised up not only to free citizenship, 
but to full political equality with his Caucasian fellow- 
countrymen. Never before in the history of the world, 
probably, had any people undergone such a transfor- 
mation of its lot in so brief a space of time. 

Meanwhile, the Negroes in Boston, with the en- 
couragement and support of their white friends, had 
entered upon a campaign to secure an even larger 
measure of equality in their own state. In Massachu- 
setts, where the Negro had been free since the days of 
the nation's birth, and where for many years, possessed 
of the ballot, he had stood on the same political plane 
as other members of the community, he now aspired to 
equal civil rights as well. 



94 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

As a result of the Abolitionist propaganda and the 
other favorable influences which have been noted, 
Boston's Negro citizens were free in general, when 
peace returned, to come and go in the community as 
they chose, so far as availing themselves of public 
privileges was concerned. In certain respects, how- 
ever, they were still subject to objectionable discrimin- 
ation. This appeared principally in the refusal of some 
of the hotels, restaurants, theaters, and other places of 
recreation or amusement, to serve or admit Negroes.^ 

Immediately after the war, the Negro leaders peti- 
tioned for a law which should render illegal any denial 
to their race of privileges commonly accorded to all 
other citizens. The result was the adoption by the Leg- 
islature, in 1865, of an act forbidding discrimination, 
on account of color or race, in licensed inns, public 
places of amusement, public conveyances, or public 
meetings, under penalty of a fine not to exceed fifty 
dollars. 2 The following year another law was passed, 
specifying further that it should be unlawful to "ex- 
clude persons from, or restrict them in" any such 
places, "except for good cause."^ 

In October, 1866, was tried the only case involving 
the civil rights of the Negro which has ever reached 
the supreme court of the state. A certain Negro had 
been refused the privilege of playing billiards in a pub- 
lic billiard room kept by a white man. The ruling of 
the court was, that as the prohibitory statutes applied 

* Brigham's restaurant on Court Street, and the Boston and old 
Globe Theaters, were complained of especially. 
2 Acts and Resolves, 1865, chap. 277. 
» Ibid., 1866, chap. 252. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 95 

only to licensed places, and as the billiard room in 
question was not licensed, no offense had been com- 
mitted, in law.^ Ere long another complaint was 
brought up. A well-known Negro had been put out of a 
public skating-rink. The case was tried by two tal- 
ented Negro lawyers, Archibald H. Grimke and 
Butler R. Wilson, both of whom were leaders in the 
equal rights agitation.^ It was won in the municipal 
court, but in the superior court was dismissed. These 
adverse decisions, followed by considerable public in- 
dignation over the difficulty which a prominent Negro 
oflScial from the South experienced in finding hotel 
accommodations in Boston,^ led to a further extension 
of the provisions of the law in 1884. The broadening 
phrase, "licensed or unlicensed," was inserted, skating- 
rinks were included by name among the places in 
which any discrimination was forbidden, and the 
maximum fine was increased to one hundred dollars.* 
In 1893, William H. Lewis, a young Negro then at- 
tending Harvard University Law School, and an ardent 
recruit to the ranks of the agitators for equality, was 
refused service in a barber shop in Cambridge.^ He 
and Wilson went before the Legislature and asked that 
not only barber shops, but all places open to public 
patronage, be included in the scope of the law. The 

^ Commonwealth v. David Sylvester. 

2 For further information regarding Grimke and Wilson, see 
Appendix, pp. 455, 456. 

^ General Robert Smalls, who under the Reconstruction regime 
was head of the South Carolina militia, and later collector of the 
port at Beaufort in the same state. His experience in Boston to 
which reference is made above, took place in 1884. 

* Acts and Resolves, 1885, chap. 316. 

^ For further information regarding Lewis, see Appendix, p. 456. 



96 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Act of 1885 was in consequence amended, and made to 
include "barber shops or other public places kept for 
hire, gain, or reward, whether licensed or not."^ The 
last revision of the law was made two years later. It 
increased the maximum fine to three hundred dollars, 
made imprisonment of not more than one year an al- 
ternative or additional penalty, and provided also for 
the recovery of damages, of not less than twenty-five 
nor more than three hundred dollars, by the person 
subjected to discrimination.^ 

By 1895, therefore, the Negro's civil rights — that 
is, his share in all public privileges of whatever sort — 
had been made fully equal, in Boston and Massachu- 
setts, to those of other elements of the community. 
So far as it was possible for the law to accomplish, 
all obstacles to the Negro's largest opportunity were 
removed, and he was placed abreast of his white fel- 
low-citizens. 

During the years in which this ground was being 

» Acts and Resolves, 1893, chap. 436. 

2 Acts and Resolves, 1895, p. 519. The full text of the law, as it 
stands to-day, is as follows: "Whoever makes any distinction, 
discrimination, or restriction on account of color or race, or, except 
for good cause, applicable alike to all persons of every color and race, 
relative to the admission of any person to, or his treatment in a 
skating-rink or other public place of amusement, licensed or un- 
licensed, or in a public conveyance or public meeting, or in an inn, 
barber shop or other public place kept for hire, gain, or reward, 
licensed or unlicensed, or whoever aids or incites such distinction, 
discrimination, or restriction, shall, for such offense, be punished by 
a fine of not more than three hundred dollars or by imprisonment of 
not more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment, and 
shall forfeit to any person aggrieved thereby not less than twenty- 
five nor more than three hundred dollars; but such person so ag- 
grieved shall not recover against more than one person by reason of 
any one act of distinction, discrimination, or restriction." 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 97 

won, the Negroes were at the same time enjoying a 
high degree of favor in the form of public offices. Prior 
to the war, no recognition of this sort had been ac- 
corded them. Even in those of the Northern States 
where they were allowed to vote, the attitude of the 
community, in face of the fact that the mass of their 
race were still held in slavery, was not indulgent to that 
extent. Probably the one solitary case in the whole 
country of a Negro being given a place of any kind, 
however humble, before the war, was that of Lewis 
Hayden, the escaped slave whose leadership among 
his people in Boston has been remarked. In 1859, he 
had been appointed messenger to the Massachusetts 
secretary of state; — a post which he filled with ex- 
emplary faithfulness until his death. Immediately 
following the war, however, the sentiment which had 
been aroused for the Negro began to manifest itself in 
the bestowment upon him of public positions, both 
appointive and elective. 

This impulse found expression chiefly through the 
medium of the Republican party, which represented 
the great majority of the North, and which was now 
fully established in power. The Negroes, on their side, 
realizing their indebtedness to that party for their 
freedom, as well as for their rights of citizenship and 
the franchise, followed its banner with an almost re- 
ligious devotion. But the friendliness toward the 
emancipated race was too general to be entirely con- 
fined in its political aspects to the Republican ranks. 
The Northern wing of the Democracy also was well dis- 
posed, and inclined toward an attitude of invitation 
and promise. In local affairs, where party issues were 



98 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

not involved, there were a scattering few Negroes, 
even at the beginning, who for one reason or another 
went with the Democrats; and the number of such 
gradually increased. Many years elapsed, however, 
before any considerable proportion of the race had the 
hardihood to deviate further than that from their 
Republican allegiance. 

The Federal Administration took the lead in extend- 
ing patronage to representatives of Boston's Negro 
inhabitants. The state followed immediately. In the 
city government, where even at that early date senti- 
ment was held more closely in check by considerations 
of a more "practical" character, such recognition 
came less quickly, and was due in some measure to the 
claims which the Negroes themselves advanced. At 
first, a majority of the recipients of political favors 
were veterans of the anti-slavery struggle and the war. 
It is worthy of note, also, that most of them were 
from the class which had previously been referred to as 
"free persons of color." At the same time there was a 
considerable admixture of former slaves. Subse- 
quently, younger men, many of them sons of freed- 
men, came in for an increasing share of the offices. For 
the reason that all were pioneers in the political history 
of their race, they have an interest which exceeds the 
actual consequence of the positions they held, — 
though for that matter, as will appear, some of these 
positions were noteworthy in themselves.^ 

In 1865, John Lenox Remond, of whose prominent 
part as one of the earliest Negro Abolitionists some- 

^ Information regarding some of these oflBceholders, in addition 
to that which follows, is given in the Appendix, Articles II and III. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 99 

thing has been related, was appointed a light inspector, 
and six years later promoted to be a clerk in the cus- 
tom-house.^ The next three federal appointees, curi- 
ously enough, were all former second lieutenants of the 
Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment. James M. Trot- 
ter, who came from Ohio, was given a clerkship in the 
post-office, and soon rose to the head of the registered 
letter division. In 1887, he was appointed by Presi- 
dent Cleveland to the high position of registrar of 
deeds for the District of Columbia. William H. Dupree, 
hailing from the same state, was started as a letter- 
carrier, but progressed steadily upward until he 
reached the post of superintendent of one of the post- 
office sub-stations. 2 In 1869, Charles L. Mitchell, 
who had come to Boston from Connecticut shortly be- 
fore the war, was made a customs inspector, and was 
subsequently advanced to the rank of clerk, in which 
capacity he established an unusual record for length 
and efficiency of service.' That year, also, John M. 
Lenox, who had figured in anti-slavery activities, was 
given a messengership in the same federal department. 
In 1894, Archibald H. Grimke, previously mentioned 
in connection with civic rights legislation, was ap- 
pointed United States Consul in the Republic of Santo 
Domingo.^ 

Far more striking, however, was the Negro's sudden 
elevation to state honors. In 1866, Boston elected two 
Negro members to the House of Representatives of 

^ He remained in this position till his death in 1873. 
^ Sub-station A in the South End. He still retains this position. 
^ He remained in the custom-house forty years, till his resigna- 
tion in 1909, on the eve of his eightieth birthday. He has since died. 
* Grimke occupied this position four years. 



100 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the Legislature. These men thereby won the distinc- 
tion in history of being the first of their race to sit in 
the legislature of any state in the Union. One of them 
was Edwin G. Walker. He was the only child of David 
Walker, who in the remarkable "Appeal," from which 
previous quotation has been made, had described his 
people as "the most degraded, wretched and abject 
set of beings that ever lived since the world began." 
Now, only a generation later, the son was raised to a 
place among the chosen lawmakers of the very state 
and in the very city where that cry had been uttered. 
Elements scarcely less dramatic were present in the 
case of Walker's colleague, Charles L. Mitchell, whose 
subsequent federal appointments have just been noted. 
For a time Mitchell had helped set the type for the 
"Liberator's" denunciations of slavery. Then as a 
soldier he had borne a valiant part in the final struggle 
which insured his people's freedom. Now, he not only 
beheld his own race transformed from chattels to free 
citizens, but found himself elected by his white coun- 
trymen to represent the whole community in the de- 
cision of its public interests. 

Both Walker and Mitchell sat in the legislature for a 
single term of one year.^ John J. Smith, previously 
mentioned as proprietor in anti-slavery days of a 
barber shop which was a favorite rendezvous of the 
Abolitionists, served in the same capacity in 1868 and 
1869; George L. Ruffin, who had come to Boston in 

* Walker represented the district of Charlestown, which had not 
at that time been annexed to Boston. It appears that his aflBliations 
in that town had been with the Democrats, and that his nomination 
came from them. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 101 

1853, and was one of the first of his race admitted to 
practice as a lawyer, followed in 1870 and 1871 ; Smith 
was returned again in 1872; Lewis Hay den was elected 
in 1873; and Joshua B. Smith, another anti-slavery 
veteran, who had built up a large business as a caterer, 
came in for the same honor in 1873 — making for the 
second time two Negro members in the same year — 
and 1874.^ Thenceforth, for a period of over twenty 
years longer, broken by brief intervals only, the Ne- 
groes continued to have their representatives in the 
legislature; those who were chosen, however, being 
later comers to the city.^ Some of these men were 
elected from districts in which there were few of their 
own people, and all of them really owed their election 
to the generous good will of the other race. 

Of state appointive positions given to Negroes, the 
most notable was that of judge of the city court for 
the Charlestown district, which, in 1883, Governor 
Benjamin F. Butler, a Democrat, conferred upon 
George L. Ruffin.^ The latter was the first of his race 
to serve on the bench in the North. In 1893, William 
O. Armstrong was appointed a court officer.'* 

In city politics, as has been remarked, the recogni- 

^ Joshua B. Smith was elected from Cambridge. For further 
mention of him, see Appendix, pp. 449 and 454. 

2 The list of Negro members of the Legislature (strictly speaking, 
of its lower branch, the House of Representatives) for the remainder 
of the period covered in this chapter, is as follows: 1878-79, George 
W. Lowther; 1883-86, Julius B. Chappelle; 1887-88, WiUiam O. 
Armstrong; 1889-90, Andrew B. L^attimore; 1892-93, Charles E 
Harris; 1894-95, Robert T. Teamoh; 1896-97 William L. Reed. The 
only Negro subsequently sent to the Legislature was W. H. Lewis, 
who was elected from Cambridge in 1902. 

^ Ruffin retained this position till his death in 1886. 

* He still holds this position. 



102 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tion which the Negroes received was due in part to 
their own solicitations. So rapidly did they increase in 
number in the West End colony, that by 1885 they 
constituted more than half the Republican voters in 
old Ward 9, which was of a strongly Republican cast. 
They were therefore able to put forward, and if neces- 
sary to enforce, a strong claim to representation in 
municipal affairs.^ Each ward elected three members 
of the Common Council, the lower branch of the city 
government. Beginning in 1776 and continuing, with 
brief lapses, till 1895, when the city was redistricted, 
the Negroes had one — and for the last two years of 
the period, two — of the councilmen from that ward. 
The election in 1895 of another Negro, from former 
Ward 10, in the South End, resulted in giving them 
three members of the board in that year. Since 1773 
they had also been represented, though not so continu- 
ously, on the corresponding municipal body in the 
suburb of Cambridge.^ The first appointment of a 

1 It might be said that this was true also with respect to repre- 
sentatives in the legislature, of which each ward was entitled to two. 
But though most of the Negro members of the latter body were 
elected from old Ward 9, it nevertheless appears to have been the 
fact that, with respect to that much higher honor, the friendliness 
of the whites was really the determining factor. 

^ The following is a list of Negro members of the Common Council 
in Boston, down to 1895: from old Ward 9, 1876-77, George L. 
Ruffin; 1878, John J. Smith; 1881, James W. Pope; 1885-86, 
William O. Armstrong; 1887-88, Andrew B. Leattimore; 1889-90, 
Charles E. Harris; 1891, Nelson Gaskins; 1892-93, Walden Banks; 
1894-95, Stanley Ruffin (son of George RuflBn) and J. Henderson 
Allston; from old Ward 10, 1895, Charles H. Hall. 

The list for the Cambridge Common Council, approximately, if 
not exactly, correct as to dates, is as follows: 1873, J. Milton Clark; 
1882-83, William Stevenson, 1883-84, W. C. Lane; 1891-95, Louis 
£. Baldwin. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 103 

Negro to a city position appears to have been that of 
W. W. Bryant, whom in 1885 a Democratic mayor 
designated to be a deputy sealer of weights and meas- 
ures. 

Though none of this considerable array of Negro 
officeholders made what would be called a brilliant 
record, none, on the other hand, acted a discreditable 
part. All rendered at least ordinary, honest service. 
Though several were able to be of special use to their 
own people,^ that phase of their accountability was 
subordinate in importance to their trusteeship in be- 
half of the community at large. Most pertinent of all, 
however, was the fact that the elevation of these mem- 
bers of the race to public office made the Negroes feel 
that they had a part of some consequence in the affairs 
of the community, and at the same time caused the 
community to form a higher opinion of them. 

During these years, also, several Negro newspapers 
were published in Boston. ^ Besides serving the gen- 
eral function of expressing and stimulating the life of 
that element of the population, they had the particu- 

^ In the Legislature, Chappelle was instrumental in obtaining the 
passage in 1886 of the bill to erect the Crispus Attucks Monument. 
Harris was identified with the bill amending the civil rights statute 
in 1893, and Teamoh with the bill making the final amendment of 
this statute in 1895. 

^ The first of these was the Boston Leader, maintained from 1875 
to 1883. The Advocate arose a little later and went out of existence 
about the same time. The Huh, edited by Archibald H. Grimke, 
ran from 1883 to 1885. The C our ant appeared in 1883 and con- 
tinued till 1899; Louis E. Baldwin, Butler R. Wilson, Mrs. George 
L. Ruffin, and George W. Forbes were among its editors. Bald- 
win and H. Gordon Street started the Republican in 1888 and kept 
it going till 1893. The foregoing dates are vouched for as approxi- 
mate only. 



104 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

lar purpose of furthering the equal rights propaganda. 
This was likewise the prevailing motive of a number of 
noteworthy books by Negro authors. William Wells 
Brown, to whose writings before the war allusion has 
already been made, continued his productivity in this 
respect. "The Black Man" was a collection of brief 
sketches of Negro leaders since the time of Crispus 
Attucks. "The Negro in the American Rebellion" 
was one of the first full accounts of the part taken by 
the Negro troops. "The Rising Son" traced the his- 
tory of the race and confidently predicted for it a 
bright future. "My Southern Home" was a vivid 
portrayal of the conditions out of which Brown had 
himself come, and which were now gone forever.^ 
From the pen of Frances Harper, of whose earlier 
writings there has also been previous mention, came 
"Moses, a Story of the Nile," and " Poems. "^ Under 
the title of "Music and Some Highly Musical People," 
James Munroe Trotter assembled much interesting 
material concerning members of his race who had won 
signal credit in that field. ^ Archibald H. Grimke was 
the author of two stirring biographies, the one of Gar- 
rison, and the other of Charles Sumner, Massachu- 
setts' noted Abolitionist Senator.^ 

Altogether, these were for the Negroes years of re- 
joicing in their newly attained privileges, and of efflor- 
escence in the first warm sunshine of their freedom. 
Before the law of the nation they were raised to a 

^ The dates at which these four books appeared were, in the above 
order, 1863, 1867, 1874, and 1880. 

2 Published in 1869 and 1871, respectively. 

» Published in 1878. 

* The former biography appeared in 1891, the latter in 1892. 



EQUAL RIGHTS AND PUBLIC FAVOR 105 

place of political peerage with the white man. In the 
law of the state of Massachusetts they were endowed 
also with full civil equality. They were elevated to 
oflSce and seated beside their white fellow-citizens in 
many positions of trust and esteem. In the midst of all 
this high fortune, their elation expressed itself in lyric 
and narrative celebration of their deliverance. On the 
side of the other race, popular sentiment with refer- 
ence to the emancipated people was generous to the 
degree of indulgence. The fact of being a Negro actu- 
ally counted as an element of advantage, as signifying 
a special claim upon the community and eliciting 
special sympathy and help. Such was the spirit of the 
period. The granting of equal rights to the Negro and 
the bestowal of public favor upon him were its domi- 
nant features. 



CHAPTER IV 

reaction: the negro forced upon his own 
resources 

But while popular favor was going out to the Negro 
in the degree that has been described, and while the 
emancipated race was in the high state of exuberance 
attending its attainment of full equality before the law : 
— even then, down below the surface, the decisive 
conditions were passing through a change, and the 
public attitude was undergoing a reaction and radical 
readjustment. At the same time, the Negroes, on their 
part, in the face of the new situation by which they 
were confronted, were as a people moving toward the 
conscious discovery of a fundamental constructive 
power within themselves. 

Northern sentiment for the Negro sustained its first 
check as a result of the wretched exhibition which that 
race gave in the South, during the period of Recon- 
struction. Passing reference has already been made to 
this dark chapter in the nation's history. Somewhat 
fuller note of it may advisedly be taken at this point. 

' The Reconstruction Acts, by enfranchising the Negroes 
and disqualifying large numbers of the more influential 
whites, made it possible for the blacks to get possession of 
the governments in most of the Southern States and to rule 
them in a most ignorant and extravagant manner. They were 
made use of by unprincipled adventurers from the North, 
who flocked to the South in considerable numbers after the 
close of the war. ... A few native Southerners — "scala- 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 107 

wags," they were called — also allied themselves politically 
with the Northern men and Negroes, for the purpose of shar- 
ing in the offices. . . . The carpet-baggers secured the nomina- 
tions to the more important offices, and were easily elected by 
large black majorities. But the colored voters were not con- 
tent to see all the offices held by their white allies, and their 
ambition was frequently too great to be ignored. 

Consequently many of the important offices came to be 
held by ignorant blacks who but a few years previous were 
field hands on the plantations. In several states Negroes 
filled the offices of lieutenant-governor, secretary of state, 
superintendent of education. ... In some instances they 
even sat upon the benches of the higher courts, while they 
filled many minor judicial positions. They occupied seats 
in the legislatures of all the Southern States, that of Missis- 
sippi in 1871 having as many as fifty-five colored members. 
A considerable proportion of these were ignorant, some of 
whom were unable to read or write, and all of whom were 
the pliant dupes of unscrupulous Northern men. With the 
state and local governments controlled by ignorant Negroes 
and designing white men, an era of extravagance, misrule, 
and corruption set in, which in some instances amounted to 
outright robbery and plunder. 

Long and frequent sessions of the legislature were held, 
for service in which the members voted themselves large 
per diem allowances. Old laws were ruthlessly repealed, and 
replaced by bulky statutes, many of which bore the ear- 
marks of animosity and oppression. . . . Laws favoring social 
equality were passed . . . offices were greatly multiplied . . . 
many of them mere sinecures. . . . Gigantic schemes of pub- 
lic improvement were undertaken, most of which were marked 
by frauds and extravagance. The rate of taxation was in- 
creased out of all proportion to the ability of the people to 
pay, in their then impoverished condition. . . . Large gratui- 
ties were voted state officials, the state capitol was furnished 
after the manner of a European palace, and vast sums were 
squandered.^ 

* Article " Reconstruction in the United States," in the Encyclo- 
pedia Americana, by James Wilford Garner, Professor of Political 
Science at the University of Illinois. 



108 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Such, stated in very moderate terms, were the in- 
tolerable conditions of misgovernment, pillage, and 
political debauchery which afflicted the South when 
the Negroes were endowed with the ballot and en- 
trusted with power. These conditions could not be 
endured for long. They began with the passage of the 
Reconstruction Acts in 1867, and they were brought 
to an end in 1876, by which time the Southern whites, 
to some extent through Ku-Klux terrorism, but in 
the main by a determined political uprising on the 
part of the better element of the population, had suc- 
ceeded in regaining control of the government of all 
the lately rebellious states.^ This overturn was the 
beginning of that systematic political repression of 
the Negro in the South, which has not yet run its 
full course. 

The effect of Reconstruction experience upon the 
North was decidedly to dampen the sentiment for the 
Negro which there prevailed. That element of the 
population, probably greatly in the majority, which had 
from the first been more or less dubious regarding 'the 
bestowal of equal rights upon the Negroes, pointed in 
justification of their misgivings to the ignorance, in- 
competence, and dishonesty which that race had dis- 
played once the doors of equal privilege had been 
thrown wide open to it. People who had expected that 
the Negroes would become good citizens immediately 
the rights of citizenship were accorded them, were 
forced to qualify their views. Some — so deep was their 

' North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, and Virginia were 
recovered by 1870; Alabama and Arkansas, in 1874; Mississippi, in 
1875; and Louisiana and Florida, in 1876. 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 109 

disappointment and disillusionment — completely 
abandoned their former faith, and joined the ranks of 
those who were at least skeptical regarding the Negro's 
capacity for progress. 

Withal, there arose a growing belief that in forcing 
through the equal rights programme at all hazards the 
North had gone too far, and that in dealing with the 
Negro question in future it should follow a less pre- 
cipitate and more cautious policy, based upon concrete 
facts rather than upon abstract doctrine. That section 
of the country had made such a dismal failure of its at- 
tempt to restore order and prosperity in the South that 
it was in a mood to be rid of the vexing task. The ex- 
tremes to which the Southern whites went in regaining 
control, and the drastic manner in which they set 
out to prevent the Negroes from voting and to reduce 
them to a position of complete submission, were of 
course far from pleasant things for Northerners to stand 
by and observe. But inasmuch as there appeared to 
be no practicable alternative, events were allowed to 
take their new course. The action of President Hayes 
in 1878, in withdrawing the last of the Federal troops 
from the lately revolted districts, and thus removing 
the only remaining element of coercion, gave definite 
alignment to the changing attitude of the North and 
of the Republican Federal Administration. 

Another influence now entered in to give the situa- 
tion a further turn in the same reversed direction. 
Through the medium of an apparently half-sponta- 
neous, half-deliberate, but at any rate very skillful 
campaign of public addresses, books, newspapers, and 
magazine writing, the South began to urge its own view 



110 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

of the Negro problem upon the North, and to solicit 
sympathy and support. 

One of the Southerners who accomplished most in 
this respect was Henry W. Grady, the editor of the 
Atlanta "Constitution." On the evening of Decem- 
ber 12, 1889, he made a notable address before the 
Merchants' Association in Boston. 

"I thank God as heartily as you do," he said, 
"that human slavery is gone forever from American 
soil. But the free man remains. With him a prob- 
lem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling 
conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same 
soil — with equal political and civil rights — almost 
equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence 
and responsibility — each pledged against fusion — 
one for a century in servitude to the other, and freed at 
last by a desolating war, the experiment sought by 
neither but approached by both with doubt — these 
are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every 
point, we are expected to carry these two races in peace 
and honor to the end. ... In spite of these things, we 
are commanded to make good this change of American 
policy which has not perhaps changed American preju- 
dice — to make certain here what has elsewhere been 
impossible between whites and blacks — and to re- 
verse, under the very worst conditions, the universal 
verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this super- 
human task with an impatience which brooks no delay 
— a rigor that accepts no excuse — and a suspicion 
that discourages frankness and sincerity, we do not 
shrink from the trial. It is so interwoven with our in- 
dustrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 111 

would — so bound up with our honorable obligation 
to the world that we would not if we could. Can we 
solve it? The God who gave it into our hands, He 
alone can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us 
do know : we cannot solve it with less than your toler- 
ant and patient sympathy." 

Grady was one of the foremost orators of the day, 
and in the impression that he made his eloquence 
doubtless played as large a part as did the substance of 
his argument. His address in Boston on this occasion 
was representative of the general character of the ap- 
peal which the South was making, with the object of 
persuading the North to its way of thinking. 

That appeal was in fact successful in advancing the 
Northern change of attitude one stage farther. Though 
the North had withdrawn from Reconstruction, it had 
not done so without ranklings of resentment at the de- 
feat of its efforts, feelings of chagrin at its own help- 
lessness, and compunctions of conscience because of 
its apparent desertion of the constitutional rights of the 
Negroes in the Southern States. Now, however, the 
South's conciliatory professions largely overcame that 
resentment, while the inculcation of the peculiar char- 
acter and exceeding difficulty of the problem which the 
Negro presented, at once assuaged chagrin and soothed 
the Northern conscience. Two convictions, further- 
more, became firmly rooted. One was that the subor- 
dination of sectional differences on account of the Negro 
was essential to the peace and welfare of the nation. 
The other was that the question of how to deal with 
the emancipated race in the former slave states should 
be left to those states themselves to settle. 



112 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

It was inevitable, however, that this change of belief 
should apply not only to Conditions in the South, but 
also, though in different sort and degree, to the position 
of the Negro in the North. There, moreover, in addi- 
tion to the effect of Reconstruction experience and 
Southern proselytizing, other kindred factors, closer 
at hand and of more immediate influence, were at 
work. Because sentiment for the Negro had mounted 
higher in Boston than anywhere else, the subsidence 
which was now taking place was, by contrast, most 
marked in that city. 

In the first place, the Abolitionists gradually passed 
away. Garrison died in 1879, Phillips in 1884, and by 
the end of the third decade after the war most of the 
others were gone. With these zealots disappeared also 
that ardor for the Negro and that vehement champion- 
ship of his cause which they embodied. The feeling 
that they cherished toward the Negro people grew out 
of the long and absorbing struggle through which they 
had gone in their behalf, and shoulder to shoulder 
with them. It was humanly impossible for that feeling 
to be shared in its fullness by others who had not also 
shared the same experience. To the sons and daugh- 
ters of the Abolitionists, anti-slavery ideals did not and 
could not have the same transcendent significance. To 
the generation of the Abolitionists' grandchildren, 
emancipation and the war were things of the past, 
whose meaning was vague and pale beside the concrete 
living realities of the present. 

Likewise, conditions among the Negroes themselves 
were taking a new aspect. The leaders of the "Old 
Guard" had been able, by virtue of the position of 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 113 

general respect and attention which they held, to act 
as middlemen between the whites and the rank and file 
of their race, and thus to exert a large influence toward 
mutual understanding. But the ranks of those old 
leaders were thinned by the years. Remond, the 
senior member of the group, died in 1873 ; Hay den, the 
most picturesque and forceful, in 1889. Soon thereafter 
only a scattering few, rendered comparatively inactive 
by age, still survived. The younger men who had come 
to Boston since the war were not able fully to assume 
the fallen mantles of the elders. They did not have the 
same stirring times to fire them with enthusiasm, nor 
were they subjected to such elemental incentives as 
would arouse in them an equal degree of devotion to 
the common cause of their people. Nor, finally, did 
they meet with the same close and real sympathy and 
support from the other race. 

To complete the passing of the old order, there be- 
gan immediately after the war, as has already been 
noted, a sudden and constantly increasing influx of 
Negro immigrants from the South. They came in 
thousands. Most of them were utterly uneducated and 
ignorant. Nearly all were more or less uncouth, many 
were ragged and dirty, and a large proportion were 
crude, dull, and indeed brutish, in appearance. These 
new arrivals became a common sight in the streets. 
They crowded into the cars, among the white passen- 
gers. They explored the shops, with mouths agape 
and eyes bulging at the marvels there displayed. 
They entered restaurants and took seats alongside the 
white patrons. They even invaded some of the most 
select Back Bay churches. In short, they were ubi- 



114 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

quitous. Never before had Boston experienced the 
Southern Negro en masse. Its previous acquaintance 
had been chiefly with the Northern free persons of 
color — a highly refined type in comparison. True, 
most of the escaping slaves of Abolition days were suf- 
ficiently abject specimens; but the majority of the 
latter had been kept out of sight, biding their flight 
still farther north. As for the refugees who took up 
their permanent abode in the city, the few exceptional 
individuals among them, like William Wells Brown 
or the others who have been mentioned, made such a 
disproportionate impression upon the popular imagina- 
tion as to cast a sheen of semi-illusion over the others, 
who, moreover, were soon inclosed and somewhat 
polished ofif by the Negro population of longer Boston 
residence. But in the face of the black horde which 
came pouring in after the war, the white inhabitants 
of Boston involuntarily and at first unwillingly re- 
coiled. Gradually, this recoil hardened into permanent 
withdrawal. 

The combined result, therefore, of the several influ- 
ences which have been cited was to effect a pronounced 
reaction in Boston's attitude toward the Negro. 
Though during its formative period this reaction de- 
veloped as an undercurrent, it made itself more and 
more distinctly felt, as time went by, and constantly 
rose nearer to the surface. Whatever expectation had 
formerly been entertained that the Negro, endowed 
with equal rights, would forthwith rise automatically 
to the level of the other elements of the community 
and be received by them into full association, was 
now replaced by the conviction that the Negro was 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 115 

different from these other elements and of a lower gra- 
dation. This change of view was in fact an approxima- 
tion to the attitude held by the South. It was far more, 
however, than mere reconciliatory truckling to sec- 
tional opinion or prejudice. It amounted to an accept- 
ance, in certain measure, of the South's anthropologi- 
cal theory with respect to the Negro, — the substance 
of which was, in the already quoted words of Grady, 
that he belonged to a "dissimilar " race, " unequal in 
intelligence and responsibility," thus constituting "a 
problem without precedent or parallel." 

This conclusion, however, was not positive, but nega- 
tive. It removed all doubt of the difficulty of the prob- 
lem, but it did not supply any clear, concrete, and prac- 
ticable plan of solution. It was an admission that the 
course previously followed with regard to the Negro 
had proved inadequate, but it was not a demarcation 
of any other course which could be pursued with the 
likelihood of proving adequate. It was destructive of 
former misconceptions, but it did not constructively 
replace them by practical understanding sufficient to 
the need. It compelled recognition of failure in the 
past, but it did not hold out any reasonable hope of 
success in the future. 

At that juncture, however, the positive, constructive, 

hopeful note was clearly sounded. The way out was 

plainly indicated. And this was accomplished, not by 

a member of the white race, but by one of the Negro 

people — Booker T. Washington,^ founder and work- 

^ Washington was born near Hale's Ford, Virginia, in 1858 or 
1859, and received his education at the Hampton Institute, situated 
at Hampton in the same state. He founded the Tuskegee School in 
1881. Prior to his Atlanta address he was already somewhat known 



116 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ing head of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial 
Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama. On September 18, 
1895, Washington delivered an address, not at Boston, 
but at the other end of the country, and, dramatically 
enough, in the very city — Atlanta, Georgia — whence 
six years before Grady had gone forth to appeal to the 
white people of the North for sympathy and patience 
with the white South in its perplexities. This address 
brought its author into sudden and lasting fame. It 
proved a great landmark in the history of his race. Its 
effect has been so momentous as to render essential 
the citation at this point of some of its most important 
passages : — 

Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the 
first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at 
the bottom, that a seat in Congress or the state legislature 
was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the 
political convention or stump-speaking had more attractions 
than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. . . . Our greatest 
danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we 
may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by 
the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that 
we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and 
glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the com- 
mon occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we 
learn to draw the line between the superficial and the sub- 
stantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No 
race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity 
in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of 
life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we per- 
mit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. ... In 
all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the 
fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual 
progress. . . . The wisest among my race understand that 

in Boston, whither he had journeyed, first in the later eighties, and 
after that at regular intervals, in the interests of his institution. 



FORCED UPON HIS OWN RESOURCES 117 

the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest 
folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges 
that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant 
struggle, rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has 
anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in 
any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all 
privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important 
that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The 
opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth 
infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an 
opera house. 

This was one " of the most notable speeches, both as 
to character and the warmth of its reception, ever 
delivered to a Southern audience," wrote the Honor- 
able Clark Howell, who had succeeded Grady as edi- 
tor of the Atlanta "Constitution." ^ " It was an epoch- 
making talk and marks distinctly a turning-point in 
the progress of the Negro race. . . . The whole speech 
is a platform on which the whites and blacks can stand 
with full justice to each race." Not only in the South, 
but in the North as well, — throughout the country, 
indeed, — the address made a profound impression. 

The tremendous significance of what Washington 
said lay in the fact that he effectually shifted the em- 
phasis in the Negro problem, placing chief stress not 
upon the question of the immediate endowment of the 
emancipated race with rights and privileges fully equal 
to those of the whites, — which had previously been 
regarded as the cardinal point, — but upon that of the 
Negro's substantial preparation for rising to a higher 
place in the nation through self-effort on his own part. 
The concrete means which Washington proposed, in or- 

1 This statement was made in a letter to the New York Herald, 
written soon after the address was delivered. 



118 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

der to achieve that result, was the development by the 
Negro of his own economic resources. Primary strate- 
gic importance was attached to agriculture — this with 
a view especially to conditions in the South — and to 
manual occupations requiring some degree of skill ; for 
the reason that these fields offered the race both the 
readiest immediate foothold and at the same time the 
surest stepping-stone to still further economic advance. 
The most fundamental and practical education along 
those lines, of the sort for which Tuskegee stood, was 
— by implication — to be utilized to the fullest degree 
in this industrial ascent. After this manner only, Wash- 
ington declared, would the Negro eventually obtain, 
through the actual demonstration of his own inherent 
worth, such political and civil privileges and enjoy- 
ments as were for the present withheld from him, on ac- 
count of his obvious and indeed inevitable deficiencies. 

As has already been suggested, the view thus taken, 
in giving to the whole problem of the Negro this new 
and radically altered orientation, was in fact the con- 
structive complement of the change in the community's 
attitude toward the Negro which was then, as has pre- 
viously appeared, in progress. The truth of this state- 
ment will appear still more clearly , however, in the light 
of a counter-movement which meanwhile had arisen 
among the Negroes themselves, and which directed it- 
self against both the reaction in Northern sentiment, 
and against Washington's interpretation of conditions. 

When, with the collapse of Reconstruction, the 
Negroes realized that their rights under the Constitu- 
tion were not to be maintained in the South, and when, 
later on, they saw also that the tide of sentiment was 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 119 

beginning to ebb in the North, the great mass of the 
race simply accepted and reconciled themselves to these 
reversals as to irrevocable matters of fact. But a cer- 
tain element, consisting chiefly of the more highly 
educated Negroes, and of those who through long 
Northern residence had become saturated with Aboli- 
tion doctrine, entered upon a movement of protest and 
agitation. This was, so to speak, a resumption of the 
earlier campaign for the passage of the Amendments 
and the Civil Rights Laws, — but it was a resumption 
on the defensive. As Boston had been the scene of the 
Negro's greatest activity in the anti-slavery struggle 
and the demand for equality, so now it became the 
principal center of his resistance to the current that 
was setting in against him. 

This protest on the Negro's part first showed itself in 
murmurings of rebuke of the Republican party, for not 
standing by the race in the Southern States. For a long 
time such complaints remained almost entirely within 
the party lines, and did not grow so strong as to cause 
defections. Very early, however, there were a few who 
revolted outright. One of the first of these was James 
M. Trotter, to whose prominence among his people sev- 
eral previous references have been made. Shortly after 
President Hayes, in 1878, withdrew the Federal troops 
from the South, leaving the way open for the return of 
the Southern whites to power, Trotter declared he 
could no longer retain his Republican allegiance. His 
subsequent appointment by President Cleveland to the 
office of registrar of deeds for the District of Columbia, 
already mentioned, was at once a recognition of his go- 
ing over to the Democrats — on the ground that he pre- 



120 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ferred no pledges at all to pledges broken ! — and also 
a bid from the Northern wing of that party for Negro 
votes. But there was no considerable breaking-away 
from the Republican ranks until General Benjamin F. 
Butler ran independently for governor of Massachu- 
setts in 1882. As major-general in eastern Virginia, 
Butler had in 1861 issued a famous order which, by 
proclaiming that escaped slaves who came within the 
Union lines should be regarded as contraband of war, 
in effect set the Negroes in that section at liberty. He 
had also organized the Louisiana Native Guards from 
free Negroes. For these reasons he obtained in the 
state campaign in 1882 a large Negro vote, which con- 
tributed appreciably to his election.^ From that time 
the proportion among the Negroes of political inde- 
pendents, who on occasion would support Democratic 
or other candidates or policies, gradually increased. 
The defection from the Republican standard, however, 
was not based upon any disagreement with planks ex- 
pressed in the party platform, but solely upon the fail- 
ure of the Republicans to enforce the Fourteenth and 
Fifteenth Amendments, and generally to accord the 
Negro what he regarded as just treatment. In other 
words, this revolt has been an integral part of the Ne- 
gro's protest against the derogation of his rights and 
immunities. 

1 Governor Butler's conferring of the judgeship of the Charles- 
town municipal court upon George L. RufBn, to which previous al- 
lusion has been made, was an acknowledgment of his indebtedness 
to the Negroes. He wished to appoint to this position Edwin G. 
Walker, who, as has been mentioned, was a Democrat. But as the 
Republican majority of his Council would not ratify Walker's se- 
lection, he appointed RufEn, who was a Republican. 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 121 

Two of the earliest organizations formed to voice 
this protest were the Wendell Phillips Club, started in 
1876, and the Colored National League, formed about 
the same time and maintained till about 1900.^ In 
1899, the latter association sent to President McKinley 
an open letter, which began thus: "We, colored peo- 
ple of Massachusetts, in mass meeting assembled, to 
consider our oppressions and the state of the country 
relative to the same " ; and, after reciting various 
grievances, went on to demand " the enjoyment of 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally with 
other men." 

Washington's Atlanta address at first bore practi- 
cally all of his own people along in the general wave of 
commendation which it elicited. But after a time, as 
its underlying significance came to be more fully appre- 
ciated, and as those portions of it which deprecated 
insistence upon privileges, and appeared to relegate the 
Negro for the present mainly to an industrial role, were 
taken up and enlarged upon the country over, the 
address incurred the angry reprobation of the agitators 
for equality. Some of the author's subsequent utter- 
ances, of similar purport, were even more fiercely con- 
demned. Thenceforth, one of the most prominent 
features of this agitation has been the vehement and 
bitter denunciation of Washington as recreant to the 
highest aspirations of his race, and the advocate of an 
unworthy and disastrous submissiveness. 

The attack upon Washington^ was definitely initi- 

^ The former organization is still in existence, though compara- 
tively inactive during recent years. It includes members of both 
races. 



122 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ated, in Boston, by William Munroe Trotter and 
George W. Forbes. The latter, to whom there has been 
previous reference, was a recruit to the equality pro- 
paganda in the third decade after the war.^ Trotter is 
the son of James M. Trotter, who died in 1892. In 
view of the father's already mentioned declaration of 
hostility against the Republican party, the son may be 
said to have come into his fighting spirit by inheri- 
tance.2 In 1901, these two men launched the "Guard- 
ian," a weekly newspaper devoted to agitation. The 
following year they and several others engineered an 
anti-Washington demonstration which, though in ap- 
pearance at the time it was little more than a disor- 
derly fracas, had in fact a real significance. Washing- 
ton was to speak on the evening of July 30, in one of 
the Negro churches,^ under the auspices of the local 
branch of the Negro Business League, an organization 
which had recently come into being through his own ef- 
forts. When that occasion arrived, the hall was crowded 
with an audience in part friendly and in part unfriendly 
to him, but swelled withal by the rumor that some- 
thing of an unusual nature was to occur. The intro- 
ductory remarks of the presiding oSicer and those of 

1 See chapter iii, and Appendix, article iii. 

2 William Munroe Trotter was born in 1872. He grew up in a 
white neighborhood, went to school with white children, and was 
valedictorian of his class both in grammar and high school. In high 
school he was also elected class president, and still holds this posi- 
tion since graduation in 1890. Entering Harvard College in 1891, he 
stood among the first four in scholarship in his freshman year, was 
elected to the Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, and graduated 
■with the degree of A.B. and A.M., the latter magna cum laude. Prior 
to starting the Guardian, he held various clerical and business 
positions. 

' The Zion African Methodist. 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 123 

several preliminary speakers occasioned hissing and 
other disturbance, and at one point led to the interven- 
tion of police officers. As soon as Washington began 
his address, one of the hostile contingent jumped up 
and started to put to him a number of questions that 
had been prepared. The police removed the disturber. 
An uproar ensued. Washington attempted to proceed, 
but was again interrupted. This time it was Trotter 
and another man, who shouted out the questions. 
They, together with a companion who had joined in the 
disorder, were arrested and taken to the police station. 
After being bailed out by Trotter's mother, they has- 
tened back to the church to renew the attack. By that 
time, however, the meeting had broken up. 

Shortly after this aflFair, Trotter and the two others 
who had been taken into custody were brought to 
trial, the plaintiff in the case being the church in which 
the fracas had occurred, and the charge that of mali- 
ciously disturbing a public meeting. The courtroom was 
crowded with Negroes, and many white people also were 
present. A white attorney acted for the prosecution, 
but the defendants were represented by four lawyers 
of their own race. The outcome was, that while one of 
the defendants was let off with a fine of $25, Trotter 
and the other were sentenced to a fine of $50 and thirty 
days' imprisonment. An appeal was taken to the supe- 
rior court, but the sentence was there confirmed. 
Trotter and his companion went to jail, regarding them- 
selves as martyrs, and held up as martyrs by those who 
shared their general point of view on the Negro ques- 
tion. 

What this point of view is may be gathered from the 



124 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

five leading questions which at the meeting that has 
been described, Washington was called upon to an- 
swer : — 

1. In your letter to the Montgomery "Advertiser," No- 
vember 27, you said: "Every revised constitution through- 
out the Southern States has put a premium upon intelligence, 
ownership of property, thrift, and character." Did you not 
thereby indorse the disfranchising of our race? 

2. In your speech before the Twentieth Centurj' Club 
here in March you said: "Those are most truly free who 
have passed through the most discipline." Are you not act- 
ually upholding oppressing our race as a good thing for us, 
advocating peonage? 

3. Again you say: "Black men must distinguish between 
freedom that is forced and the freedom that is the result of 
struggle and self-sacrifice." Do you mean that the Negro 
should expect less from his freedom than the white man from 
his? 

4. When you said, "It was not so important whether the 
Negro was in the inferior car as whether there was in that 
car a superior man, not a beast," did you not minimize the 
outrage of the insulting jim-crow car discrimination and jus- 
tify it by the "bestiality" of the Negro? 

5. In an interview with the Washington "Post," June 25, 
as to whether the Negro should insist on his ballot, you were 
quoted as saying: "As is well known, I hold that no people 
in the same economic and educational condition as the masses 
of the black people of the South should make politics a matter 
of the first importance in connection with their development." 
Do you not know that the ballot is the only self-protection 
for any class of people in this country? 

In an anniversary edition of the "Guardian" issued 
in 1904, the editors reviewed the so-called Zion Church 
affair.^ They maintained that because of Washing- 
ton's personal influence and the rapid dissemination of 

* The exact date of this number of the Guardian was July 30. 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 125 

his ideas, the Negroes who held diverse views had lost 
nearly all opportunity for a public hearing through the 
press, and that a prime object of the demonstration 
at the church had been to reach the public. This object 
they claimed to have accomplished, pointing in con- 
firmation to the far larger amount of newspaper notice 
accorded their subsequent meetings and activities. 
They contended also that, by virtue of this setting 
forth of their principles, they had compelled Washing- 
ton somewhat to modify his utterances, — which 
were still, however, sufficiently obnoxious. 

Since these events occurred, Trotter has continued 
his agitation with unremitting vigor. He directs his 
protest against everything which can be even remotely 
suspected of drawing the color line or relegating the 
Negroes to an inferior place. One of the most signal 
local achievements in which he had a leading part, 
was the forcing from the Boston stage, in the winter 
of 1910, of the notorious play, "The Clansman," 
which portrays the Negro as essentially a brute. In his 
never-ceasing attack he is unyielding to the last degree, 
and has repudiated many a former friend for some 
deviation from what is to himself the true belief. The 
extreme to which he carries his pursuit of color dis- 
crimination is shown by the fact that he opposed a 
promising local effort on the part of a number of his 
race to carry on betterment work among newly arrived 
Southern immigrants, and attacked a social settle- 
ment established by whites for the benefit of Negroes, 
on the ground that both these enterprises furthered 
segregation and discrimination. His activity is not 
confined to Boston. He helped to launch the New Eng- 



126 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

land Suffrage League in 1904, the Niagara Movement 
in 1905, and the National Independent Political 
League in 1908, and has become one of the leaders in 
the larger movement to combat race prejudice which 
these organizations represent. 

Recently this movement has enlisted noteworthy 
support from an element of the other race. In 1910 was 
organized the National Association for the Advance- 
ment of Colored People. Its president is Moorfield 
Storey, the well-known anti-imperialist, of Boston, 
in which city it also has one of its most vigorous 
branches. Jane Addams is a member of the executive 
committee. This society, which draws no color line in 
its membership, has secured W. E. B. DuBois, formerly 
of Atlanta University, to direct its endeavors. Dr. 
DuBois is regarded as probably the most intellectual 
man of the Negro race to-day, as well as its foremost 
present representative in the equal-rights agitation. 
He is also one of the well-recognized sociologists of the 
country. The line along which he will strive is indi- 
cated by the following statement which the association 
sent out soon after its formation : — 

The attitude of the American people toward our Negro 
citizens has given rise to conditions, the spread of which 
cannot fail seriously to imperil our democracy. . . . Race 
prejudice is increasing, North and South. . . . On all sides we 
hear of the grossest discrimination in the courts, in the pub- 
lic education system, and in industry. The remedy for this 
state of affairs lies solely in a right attitude of the public 
mind, and the endeavor to bring about such an attitude will 
call for active, untiring work by our association. We must 
leave no misstatement unanswered, no injustice unpro- 
tested, and by a close, united organization must build up, 
step by step, a public opinion that will make impossible our 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 127 

present barbarities to a race which we have set aside, in its 
entirety, from normal citizenship. 

Thus in recent years the agitation for equal rights has 
evidently made a certain amount of headway. It has 
enlisted new recruits. It has secured a hearing before 
the public. It has formed an organization through 
which it may the more effectively express itself. 

But during the same period the change and readjust- 
ment of attitude toward the Negro, and the general 
indorsement of Washington's point of view and plan 
of operation, have made progress many times more ex- 
tensive than that of the counter-movement which has 
been described. One of the most impressive and pro- 
mising elements of this progress has been the turn- 
ing to Washington's principles on the part of the 
great mass of his own race. In Boston, as has already 
been intimated and as will later be more amply shown, 
the rank and file of the Negro population is made up of 
recent immigrants from the South. These Southern 
Negroes grew up among their people in the "Black 
Belt," accustomed to regard the color line as a fact 
rather than a grievance. Their most immediate and 
vital concern is to earn a living. They instinctively 
recognize that a plan which will enable them to earn 
a better living will necessarily promote their general 
welfare. Except for a small and scattering minority, 
they have therefore accepted the gospel of salvation 
through work. This acceptance has not come about so 
much through a process of conscious reasoning as it 
has through the promptings of a native common sense. 
It finds expression not so much in words or declamation 
as in the ordinary acts of each day's routine. But therein 



128 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

is it all the more real and substantial. As it is with 
the rank and file, so it is with most of those who oc- 
cupy positions of leadership, a majority of whom also 
are to-day of Southern birth and rearing. They both 
share and respond to the feeling of the mass of their 
race. Especially noticeable is the extent to which the 
younger leaders, as they arise, are planting their feet 
squarely upon the solid ground of self-help. 

More significant still is the fact that a majority of 
the Negroes who were formerly in the forefront of the 
equal-rights agitation have substantially modified their 
views in the light of a fuller understanding of condi- 
tions. Most of the earlier leaders in that agitation no 
longer take part in it with their pristine vehemence, and 
have grown to be at least tolerant of the prevailing at- 
titude. Some, while not abandoning their belief in the 
importance of constant activity by the Negro to safe- 
guard his rights, have become convinced that tactics 
less precipitate and more conciliatory in character are 
better adapted to that purpose, and have at the same 
time openly committed themselves to the substance of 
Washington's position. These latter are represented 
most prominently in the Boston community by Wil- 
liam H. Lewis, to whom reference has already been 
made in connection with civil rights legislation, and 
whose opinion should command special respect by 
reason of the high posts in the public service which, as 
will at a later point be mentioned specifically, he has 
occupied. 

For a time after leaving the Law School I was counted as 
one of the radicals and agitators [said Mr. Lewis in a state- 
ment to the writer], but I found so many good people who 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 129 

approved Dr. Washington's course and who were just as 
sincere in their advocacy of human rights and Negro rights 
as I myself, that I began to ask myself if they were wholly 
wrong and myself wholly right. I came to believe that they 
were more right than I, and so I decided that I should not 
make the business of my life the pulling down of some other 
men or slinging mud at a real worker. 

In an address at Cleveland, Ohio, in August, 1909, 
he further defined his present attitude : — 

Northern colored men — in their earnest zeal for better 
things — should be careful not to hinder, not to retard, not 
to jeopardize, the progress toward that happy consummation 
which both races are working out to-day. Mere indiscrimi- 
nate denunciation, vituperation, recrimination, and abuse 
on our part, will accomplish nothing. . . . The race in the 
minority, like the individual in society, who is always in the 
minority, must advance, if at all, by the same line that the 
individual advances, by tact, ability, conduct, character, 
common sense, and diplomacy. . . . Our old-time methods of 
agitation, denunciation and exposition of our wrongs, to- 
day fall upon deaf ears and find little sympathy anywhere. 
. . . The educated colored men have not taken advantage of 
the human failing which will often grant a request when itwill 
refuse to yield to a just demand. They have forgotten that, 
though man's heart may be apparently surcharged with the 
blackest hate and prejudice, somewhere from his inner con- 
sciousness flowsthe milk of human kindness. They have failed 
to realize that under present conditions the field of diplomacy 
has scarcely been touched in the solution of race problems. 

Likewise by the vast majority of white people, in 
Boston as elsewhere, the principles enunciated by 
Washington have been accepted as the most practi- 
cable and normal course to be followed with respect to 
the emancipated race. There is a reason for this ac- 
ceptance, moreover, which is far broader and deeper 
than any consideration peculiar to this particular prob- 



130 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

lem. It is this : that while the dominant commercial 
spirit which characterizes the present generation makes 
less response than the humanitarian spirit of the pre- 
ceding generation to abstract appeals regarding the 
Negro's rights, this same commercial spirit responds 
readily to the proposal to develop the latent productive 
capacities of the Negro people and thus to enhance 
their value to the community. This proposal, espe- 
cially in its advocacy of industrial education, is, fur- 
thermore, in line with the rapidly evolving new 
humanitarianism, which places less emphasis upon 
the immediate relief of human distress and more 
upon the eliciting of human powers. 

By a chronological coincidence, which was, to say 
the least, remarkable, Washington's epochal Atlanta 
address was delivered in the very year that witnessed 
the death of Frederick Douglass. The latter, who, as 
previously remarked, had come to be looked upon as 
the foremost representative of his race, may be said to 
have embodied the old order, with uncompromising 
Abolitionist doctrine as its dominant note.^ In 
Boston the same year, curiously enough, saw the last 
amendment which extended the scope of the state's 

^ In an address in Rochester, New York, March 13, 1848, Douglass 
defined his position on equal rights as follows: "I look upon all com- 
plexion distinctions, such as Negro pews, Negro berths on steam- 
boats, Negro cars. Sabbath or week-day schools or churches, etc., 
as direct obstacles to the progress of reform, and as the means of 
continuing the slave in his chains." W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots 
of the Revolution, p. 361. 

After the war, Douglass was not much in Boston. He traveled 
over the country as a lecturer, but spent most of his time in Wash- 
ington, D.C., where he held a number of high federal offices. He died 
in that city. 



FORCED ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 131 

statute of civil rights. That year — 1895 — may, there- 
fore, very aptly be taken as the dividing point between 
the old order and the new. This is not to say that the 
change was then complete. Indeed, it was still for the 
most part taking place beneath the surface. But it 
had by that time entered upon the decisive stage. 
Since then it has been fully consummated. In this new 
order the central motive is the belief that it is not so 
much the immediate possession of all political and civil 
rights and privileges, but rather the underlying equip- 
ment for the proper exercise of such rights and privi- 
leges, of which the mass of the Negroes now stand most 
vitally in need. The conviction has taken root that, if 
the Negro people are to achieve real and lasting pro- 
gress, they must be made to depend primarily not upon 
the bestowal of favor from without, but upon their own 
independent effort from within. What is most signi- 
ficant of all, however, is that this fundamentally con- 
structive principle has emanated from the emancipated 
race itself, finding its commanding expression through 
a member of that race who, as the son of a slave woman, 
himself born into slavery, symbolizes in his own life 
history the link between the chattel bondage that has 
been destroyed and the economic independence that 
must be achieved. Thus it is a fact that, as the Negro 
may warrantably be held to have insured his own de- 
liverance from slavery by his crucial part in the Civil 
War, so now it is he himself who has discovered and 
entered upon what is generally believed to be the true 
course, which is to lead him up and out of the servitude 
that his own present backward conditions inevitably 
impose upon him. 



132 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Thus has it come about that even in Boston, where 
the Negro first attained to manhood's free estate, where 
his freedom throughout the nation had its birth, and 
where the sentiment in his favor reached its zenith, he 
has, as elsewhere, been forced back upon his own re- 
sources. And even in Boston, the historic stronghold 
of the Negro's agitation for equality, the place of all 
places where he might expect to accomplish most by 
adhering to a policy of agitation, he himself has come 
to recognize that in the last analysis his advance de- 
pends upon the cultivation of his own resources. 

Judged now from the point of view of self-achieve- 
ment, what verdict does the Negro merit? Do the actual 
facts reveal that, except in so far as he has been fa- 
vored and bolstered up by the white race, he has either 
helplessly stood still, or fallen back? Or, on the con- 
trary, do these facts afford ample proof that by his 
own powers and exertions he has forced his way upward 
and ahead? To-day, is he in a state of retrogression, 
stationariness, or advance? If he is found to be mov- 
ing forward, then in what measure is this the case? 
These are the vital questions upon which conclusions 
as to the Negro's present and future position in the 
community must depend. To obtain clear and con- 
vincing answers to these questions is the task which 
now devolves upon us. 



CHAPTER V 

TAKING ROOT 

First of all, what of the physical basis upon which 
the well-being of the Negro community necessarily 
rests? It is sometimes asserted that this element of the 
population is gradually dying out. Is such in fact the 
case, so far as the situation in Boston is concerned? If 
the Negroes are found to be still growing in number, 
to what extent is this growth due to accessions from 
without, and from what localities do the newcomers 
hail? It might be assumed, oflPhand, that the Negro is 
relegated to the least desirable portions of the city. 
How far is that assumption correct? Are the members 
of this race cut oflf and practically isolated, with re- 
spect to residence at least, from the rest of the com- 
munity, or are they in substantial measure intermingled 
and articulated with its other constituent elements? 
How is the Negro faring in his encounter with present- 
day urban conditions? Is he getting a firm physical 
grip and foothold, atid is his situation in this basic re- 
spect favorable or unfavorable to his general progress? 

The initial fact which these queries elicit is that 
a native Boston stock of Negroes has as yet barely 
begun to get established. From earliest times this race 
has been subject to a high death rate and a compara- 
tively low birth rate. In 1860 the City Registrar re- 
ported that, for the five years preceding, " the number 



134 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

of colored births was one less than the number of 
marriages, and the deaths exceeded the births in the 
proportion of two to one." For the eleven years from 
1900 to 1910, the average Negro birth rate and death 
rate were exactly the same, 25.4 per thousand persons, 
as compared with a birth rate of 26.9 and a death rate 
of 18.7 for the whites.^ Under these conditions, it is 
clear that, even assuming a complete absence of emigra- 
tion, the Negro population would on its own base barely 
maintain each year its numbers of the previous year. 

This high mortality has been due to the combined 
effect of a vitality less than that of the whites, the rigor 
of the Northern climate, and economic and social hard- 
ships. The Negroes have always been particularly a 
prey to tuberculosis and other affections of the respira- 
tory organs. Deficient racial vitality is manifested also 
in the greatly disproportionate number of deaths of 
infants. Compared with the climate to which the Negro 
race has for ages been accustomed in Africa, and that 
to which the great mass of American Negroes have 
been used in the South, the Boston climate is of course 
severe. The peculiar vicissitudes and disturbances 
which are a part of the Negro's lot add by so much to 
the physical strain upon him. 

The Negro birth rate in Boston is not strikingly small 
when viewed locally and by itself. As has appeared, 
it i§ only 1.5 per thousand less than that of the entire 
white population, and it is undoubtedly above that of 
the native-descended whites and the more highly cul- 

* These rates for the white population are the average for the 
period 1900-06, but would be practically the same if brought down 
to 1910. 



TAKING ROOT 135 

tured element. But it is low as compared with the birth 
rate of the Negro race in the rural South, and of course 
very low as set over against its companion death rate 
in Boston, — the high percentage of deaths not being 
counter-balanced, as is the case among some of the 
Southern-European and Asiaticpeoples, by a still higher 
percentage of births. This shortage of births is not due 
to a lesser proportion of marriages. The local marriage 
rate for the Negroes is only slightly under that of the 
whites; for the years 1900-06, 18.5 as against 19.1 per 
thousand. But it is a fact that with Negroes of long 
Northern residence, and particularly with the more 
educated and refined, the proportion of childless mar- 
riages is large, and small families are the rule. There is 
considerable voluntary restriction of births, due some- 
times to stern economic prohibitions, sometimes to an 
unwillingness to bring children into the midst of the 
difficulties which surround this race, and sometimes to 
merely selfish considerations of convenience. In the 
case of the upper gradations of the Negro community, 
and in appreciable degree even with the rank and file, 
the higher standard of living to which they become ac- 
customed in Boston is also an important influence in 
reducing the number of births. But the low birth rate 
is accounted for in large part by the same factors which 
produce a high death rate : — inferior vitality, the stern 
climate, and the nervous-physical wear and tear of eco- 
nomic and social adversities to which the Northern 
environment renders the Negroes more sensitive.^ 

^ For a comparison of the Negro and white population with re- 
spect to marital condition and proportion of children, see Appendix, 
table XI. 



136 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

While the excessive mortality and the paucity of 
births have thus worked for the extinction of Boston's 
native Negro population, emigration has at the same 
time tended toward its dispersion. In the early 
period, there was doubtless little emigration of Negroes 
from Boston, inasmuch as oppressive "Black Laws" 
were in force in most of the Northern States.^ The first 
emigration in large numbers was that of escaped slaves, 
who were again frightened into flight by the passage of 
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and by the subsequent 
greatly increased activity of slave-hunters. The war 
made a further drain on the Negro population. Appar- 
ently more than half the Negro soldiers from Boston 
who survived the conflict cast their abode in other sec- 
tions of the country, and especially in the South. 
Those who were married removed their families, and 
many drew away relatives and friends. Immediately 
following the war began a movement of young Negroes 
of both sexes into the South, to serve as teachers in the 
schools which were everywhere springing up in that 
section. This movement is still going on.^ Such de- 

1 Indeed, prior to about 1840, refugees from those states consti- 
tuted the bulk of the Negro immigration to Boston. 

^ One of the pioneers of these missionaries of education was 
Louise de Mortie (sister of Mark de Mortie, mentioned in Appen- 
dix, p. 454), who was known for her rare beauty and her charm as a 
public reader. She went to New Orleans to devote herself to the 
Negro children left orphans by the ravages of war, and there she 
met her death, in 1867, as a victim of yellow fever. Another was 
Charlotte L. Forten, who had come to Boston from Philadelphia in 
1854, and who wrote for the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. 
In later years Miss Forten became the wife of Francis James 
Grimke, of Washington, D.C., the brother of Archibald H. 
Grimkc, previously referred to, and himself a minister and author. 
Richard Theodore Greener, of the class of 1870 of Harvard College, 
and the first Negro graduate from that institution, became profes- 



TAKING ROOT 137 

partures, however, have constituted only a fractional 
part of the entire emigration, which has in the main 
been brought about by the same variety of influences 
which cause shifting among any element of the popula- 
tion. There have been two factors, however, of more 
particular character and greater effect than the rest. 
One of these is the economic and social stress which, as 
has appeared, bears such an important relation to 
Negro births and deaths; and which, especially since 
the change of attitude toward the Negroes in recent 
years, has compelled many of them to leave Boston 
and to seek a livelihood elsewhere. The second is an 
excessive migratoriness which is inherent in the Negro 
character. Obstacles in the environment are not 
opposed by a quality of rootedness, and so, many 
Negroes are continually leaving Boston, in the futile 
expectation of finding things easier somewhere else. 

According to a careful calculation, based on figures 
from the national census, it appears that in the decade 
1890-1900, from 835 to 1025 Massachusetts-born 
Negroes, and from 2141 to 2632 Negroes altogether, 

8or of mental and moral philosophy in the University of South 
Carolina. Professor Greener was the United States consul at Vladi- 
vostock, during the recent Russian-Japanese War. About 1905 
Georgiana Charleston, a graduate from the Boston Normal School 
and from a special course at the Institute of Technology, and in 
1907 Marjorie Groves, a graduate of the New England Conserva- 
tory of Music, went as teachers to Livingstone College, South Caro- 
lina. Among the Negro graduates from local educational institutions 
in 1910, at least two, Edwin Kenmore, a student of the Massachu- 
setts Normal Art School, and Esther L. Francis, who took a course 
at the New England Conservatory of Music, are turning their edu- 
cation to good account in the Southern field. These, moreover, 
are but a few instances of the large number of recruits for Southern 
schools who have gone out from Boston. 



138 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

emigrated from the Boston district.^ More went to 
New York than to any other state, and after New 
York came, in numerical order, Connecticut, Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey, Virginia, the District of Columbia, 
Illinois, and Rhode Island. But the diversity of destin- 
ation is shown by the facts that only four states and 
territories, at most, did not receive Massachusetts- 
born Negroes in that decade; and that in all probabil- 
ity not a single state or territory failed to get Negroes 
who had been, for a longer or shorter period, residents 
of Massachusetts. Nor for that matter do the bounds 
of the United States limit the Negro's ranging afar.^ 

The tendencies toward both extinction and disper- 
sion which have been pointed out are strikingly exem- 
plified in the family histories of the group of Negro 
leaders who held sway in Boston during the first years 
after the war, whose names have already been men- 
tioned. Some of those leaders died childless. Others 
had children who died in their youth. In the case of 
others, the children, most of whom have been females, 
have either not married or have not borne offspring. 
In still other cases, the children have moved away 
and scattered. Few, indeed, are the instances in which 



1 The figures on which this calculation is based were taken from 
the federal census of 1900. Similar data from the census of 1910 
were not available when the present account was written. For de- 
tailed emigration figures, see Appendix, table VI. 

" For instance, Joseph H. Lee, who comes of a Negro family of 
which more will be said at a later point, is trying his fortunes in 
Mexico. M. Hamilton Hodges went to Australia with a theatrical 
company and there won musical success. Walter F. Walker, who a 
few years ago was a printer's assistant in Boston and a student at 
Boston University, is now teaching in an industrial school in Liberia, 
of which country he is coming to be an influential citizen. 



TAKING ROOT 139 

married progeny of those old leaders, with families, 
are still living in Boston to-day. And as it has gone 
with them, so it has gone with the rest of their genera- 
tion and the generations before and after them. 

Nevertheless, ever since the bringing of the first few 
slaves to Boston in 1638, the Negro population of this 
city has constantly increased. Prior to the war, the 
growth, in this respect, though steady, was slow. 
Mention has already been made of the figures of the 
early period. The first count, taken in 1742, — the one 
hundred and fourth year of the Negro's history in 
the city, — showed 1374 members of that race. By 
1830, it had grown to 1875. In 1865, it was 2348. 
These figures have reference to Boston proper — that 
is, to the area included in the municipality of that 
name — and do not cover the outlying sections which 
are now comprised in the so-called Metropolitan or 
Greater Boston district. Not till after the war, as a 
matter of fact, did the number of Negroes living in 
these outlying sections become substantial. Subse- 
quently, however, the whole metropolitan district has 
been practically a unit as regards the growth and 
intertexture of this element of the community, whose 
increase therein has been large and rapid. In 1865, 
there were 3495 Negroes in Greater Boston. By 1875, 
the number was 7400; by 1885, 9481; by 1895, 16,307; 
by 1905, 21,234; and by 1910, 23,115.i 

With respect to the proportion of Negroes in the 
total population, a gradual decline before the war has 

1 For list of cities and towns included in the Greater Boston dis- 
trict, and for complete population figures for Boston proper, and 
Greater Boston, Negroes and whites, see Appendix, tables I to V. 



140 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

been followed by a steady rise in the period since. The 
highest mark was attained in 1752, when the propor- 
tion of Negro inhabitants of Boston proper stood at 
10 per cent. By 1865 this proportion had fallen to 1.2 
per cent. Then it began to go up, till by 1895 it had 
become 2 per cent, at which point it still remains. In 
the Greater Boston district the ratio of Negroes to the 
entire number of inliabitants was, in 1865, .8 per cent. 
It has risen to 1.7 per cent to-day. During the forty- 
five years from 1865 to 1910 the Negro population of 
Greater Boston increased by 561 per cent, as against 
an increase of 225 per cent for the total population 
during the same period. Moreover, in every five-year 
period since the war, except that of 1880-85, and the 
decade 1900-10, the rate of growth of the metropolitan 
Negro population has outrun that of the population as 
a whole. 

This growth of Greater Boston's Negro community 
has been due entirely, however, to immigration. Nor 
do these gains of the past four decades and a half, — 
3905, 2341, 6466, 4929, and 1981, respectively, or 
19,622 in the total — fully measure the influx, which 
has in fact exceeded these proportions by the number 
of immigrants who have simply gone to offset the 
losses sustained through deaths and emigration, and 
who are, therefore, not accounted for in the net in- 
crease. 

A comparison of the nativity of the Negroes in 
Boston in earlier and later years shows clearly whence 
the immigrants have come, and how complete a 
change has taken place in the Negro community's 
nativity composition. In 1860, of the American-born 



TAKING ROOT 141 

Negroes in Boston proper, nearly 70 per cent were of 
Northern birth. By 1870 the proportion had declined 
to 55 per cent, by 1890, to 44 per cent, by 1900, to 39 
per cent, and to-day it must be down to about 36 per 
cent. Of these Northern-born Negroes approximately 
one quarter are immigrants from other Northern 
States. About the same percentage of the remainder 
are immigrants from points in Massachusetts outside 
the Greater Boston district. This makes the propor- 
tion of Negroes in Boston proper who were born 
within the limits of Greater Boston, about 20 per cent 
of the city's total Negro population. Recurring to the 
36 per cent of Negroes of Northern birth, it appears 
that only one third of those are the offspring of parents 
who were also born in the North. ^ Of this one third, 
moreover, less than half are the offspring of parents 
who were born in Greater Boston. In other words, only 
about 5 per cent of the American-born Negroes in 
Boston are of Boston stock even one generation back. 
On the other hand, the proportion of Negroes of 
Southern birth in the American-born Negro popula- 
tion of Boston was, in 1860, 29 per cent. By 1870, this 
proportion had risen to 43 per cent, by 1890, to 53 
per cent, by 1900, to 57 per cent, and to-day it must 
be about 62 per cent. The great majority of these 
Negroes come from the upper seacoast districts of the 
South, chiefly from Virginia and North Carolina, and 
from the vicinity of the cities of Richmond and 
Charleston, in that region. It is clear, therefore, that 
for a Negro population predominantly of Northern 

1 That is, fully two thirds are the offspring of parents who were 
born in the South. 



142 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

birth has been substituted, since the war, one pre- 
dominantly of Southern birth. And inasmuch as each 
year's quota of newcomers has been gradually reduced 
by excessive mortality and emigration, it is clear also 
that Boston's present Negro population is composed 
for the most part of comparatively recent Southern im- 
migrants — the majority probably having come in the 
last fifteen years, approximately — and their offspring. 

Besides the Negroes born in the United States, 
Boston has a considerable number who are of foreign 
birth. In 1860, the proportion of these in the city 
proper was 14.9 per cent, in 1870, 10.8 per cent, inl890, 
14.2 per cent, and in 1900, 10.8 per cent. The two 
largest groups of foreign immigrants are from the 
British West Indies and Canada. A few hail from other 
parts of the world. ^ 

As to the effects of this constant immigration from 
the South and elsewhere, — while, on the one hand, it 
has added to the size of the Negro population, it has 
meant, on the other hand, that the new material to be 
absorbed and assimilated by the Negro community 
has been continually increasing in quantity. At the 
same time the constant emigration has meant that the 
local base of assimilation has continually been sub- 
tracted from, and that thus much of the ground 
gained has been lost. Together, these incessant inward 
and outward currents have kept the Negro community 
in a permanent state of flux and unsettleraent. 

Under these in so far unfavorable conditions, the Ne- 
gro has during the recent period been engaged in what 

1 For detailed figures applying to both American and foreign- 
born Negroes, see Appendix, tables VIII to X. 



TAKING ROOT 143 

is generally one of the most bafl3ing of his urban prob- 
lems, — namely, the location of his home. Notable 
developments under this motive have been the shifting 
of the principal Negro center from the West End to 
the upper South End and Roxbury; the rise of Negro 
colonies in the suburbs; and the increasing movement 
of Negroes into white neighborhoods. 

From about 1830 till about 1892 more Negroes lived 
in the West End, beyond Joy Street and down along 
the northwesterly slope of Beacon Hill to several blocks 
below Cambridge Street, than in any other section of 
Greater Boston. But after the war and the beginning 
of the influx from the South, the proportion of the 
Negro population of the city proper residing in that 
locality steadily fell, from 80 per cent in 1865 to 36 
per cent in 1890. Soon after 1890, and conspicuously 
after 1895, a movement to the South End and the 
suburbs began. It was started primarily by the preva- 
lence of deteriorated housing conditions combined 
with rents comparatively high. Because the Negroes 
had lived in the West End quarter since the early days, 
the dwellings there had not been kept up to the stand- 
ard for other parts of the city, but were old and run- 
down. Nevertheless, owing to more or less difficulty 
which Negroes experienced in locating in other sec- 
tions, on account of the prevailing disinclination of 
white residents to have them as neighbors, landlords 
were still able to exact high rents in the old locality. 
The Negro residents in these other sections had, how- 
ever, been increasing in number; thus, on the principle 
of the entering wedge, making access for newcomers 
easier. 



144 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The more well-to-do led the emigration from the 
West End, and many of this class, in the decade 1890- 
1900, bought homes in outlying districts. Their de- 
parture accelerated the general exodus. The increase 
of an objectionable element of both races in the 
vicinity made the better grade of Negroes, solicitous 
for the welfare of their children, the more desirous of 
getting away. By 1900, the proportion of the Negro 
population of Boston proper living in the West End 
had fallen to 22 per cent, and by 1905, to 17 per cent; 
their numbers meanwhile decreasing from 2935 in 1890 
to 2603 in 1900, and to 2000 in 1905. To-day there are 
not more than 1500 Negroes, at most, in that district, 
and though they still reach to Joy Street on the east, 
at other points they are confined to a much more 
restricted area than formerly; not extending up 
Beacon Hill farther than Phillips Street to the south, 
nor beyond Cambridge and West Cedar Streets on the 
north and west. In the quality of its Negro residents 
the section is tending to deteriorate. It is true that 
some of the better type still live there, but this is 
usually for the reason that they are attached to the 
homes they have known for many years; and as the old 
folks die, their heirs will in all likelihood sell the 
property and move away. The newcomers of the 
Negro race are predominantly of the illiterate, shift- 
less, semi-vicious sort. The Jews, who since the late 
nineties have been coming in rapidly, buying up the 
old houses and building cheap though showy tene- 
ments, some of which they rent to Negroes, now form 
the great majority of the population. The racial 
change which has thus come about is further evidenced 



TAKING ROOT 145 

by the fact that two former Negro churches have been 
transformed into Jewish synagogues. 

During the first part of the decline of the West End 
Negro colony, that of the lower South End, from 
Pleasant Street south to Castle Street, and from 
Washington Street west to Columbus Avenue, rose to 
first place numerically. As early as 1875 there were 
about 700 Negroes in this locality, and by 1898 the 
number had increased fourfold. In the decade 1880- 
90, there was no other section where Negroes and 
whites of good quality were so closely intermingled as 
next-door neighbors. Then traflSc and small shop trade 
began to encroach, bringing noise, dirt, and unsightli- 
ness. A vicious element of blacks and whites in- 
creased rapidly, and ere long gave the section an un- 
savory reputation. The better whites and Negroes 
moved away, the latter chiefly to the suburbs. A dete- 
rioration, similar to that which has occurred in the West 
End, has subsequently taken place, and to-day some 
of the lowest Negro resorts are to be found in this sec- 
tion. At present there are only about 800 Negroes in 
the locality, and the number is growing smaller. The 
dwellings, chiefly tenements and lodging-houses, are 
now if anything inferior to those of the West End. The 
white population is Irish, Jewish, and nondescript. 

Such emigrants from the West End and the lower 
South End as did not move outside the city, took up 
their abode in the upper South End and lower Roxbury 
district. The early nuclei of this colony were North- 
ampton and Lenox Streets at the north, Kendall 
Street in the center, and Sussex and Warwick Streets 
at the south. Between these points a gradual filling-in 



146 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

has taken place. A noticeable increase of the Negro 
residents was evident by 1875, and by the middle 
nineties the number had grown to over 1000. But the 
great increase has come since 1895. By 1900, close to 
8500, or 30 per cent of the Negroes in the city, lived 
in this section, as compared with 10 per cent in 1890. 
At present, between Northampton Street on the north 
and Ruggles Street on the south, Washington Street 
on the east and Tremont Street on the west, an area 
about one and a quarter miles long by a mile wide, are 
living approximately 5000 Negroes, or 40 per cent of 
the entire Negro population of Boston proper. If the 
boundaries be extended a little to the north, north- 
west, and east, to include several localities where the 
Negroes are less numerously colonized, the total would 
be close to 7000. The movement of the Negroes to this 
district led to the transfer thither of their churches 
and organization headquarters; which, in turn, espe- 
cially in the case of the churches, only one of which 
still remains in the West End section, greatly acceler- 
ated and in fact gave the final impetus to the migra- 
tion. 

To-day this is the principal Negro center of Greater 
Boston. Within the smaller area, the boundaries of 
which have been given, the Negroes constitute about 
a third of the population. The Irish form a somewhat 
larger proportion. Americans ("Yankees") occupy 
third place, but are closely pressed for this position by 
the Jews. There is an appreciable admixture of 
Swedes, and small scatterings of half a dozen other 
races. The Negroes and the Jews are the incoming and 
increasing elements, and in many localities these two 



TAKING ROOT 147 

races, so diverse in their qualities but whose struggles 
upward have much in common, are both close neigh- 
bors and close competitors for the dwellings and the 
small trade. As in the West End the Jews now worship 
in two former Negro churches, so here the Negroes 
have returned the compliment by taking over a former 
synagogue for their own devotions. The distribution 
of the Negroes over this district is in part compact, in 
part dispersed. Only a few streets, of which the longest 
are Windsor, Camden, Kendall, and Sawyer, are 
almost wholly occupied by Negroes. On the other 
hand, there are twice as many streets which contain 
hardly any Negroes at all. A half-dozen streets and sec- 
tions of streets are preponderantly Negro. For the 
rest, the two races are intermingled, sometimes one 
end of a street, or even one side, being white and the 
other Negro, and sometimes Negroes and whites alter- 
nating almost evenly. Thus far, therefore, the district 
is far from being a solid Negro quarter, like that which 
used to exist in the West End, and like the city's pres- 
ent Jewish and Italian quarters. Competition for 
cheap rents, on the part of the Jews and the Irish, and 
the movement of many of the most well-to-do Negroes 
to the suburbs, will probably keep this neighborhood a 
mixed one. It remains to be seen, moreover, whether 
eventually West End history will repeat itself in the 
Jews getting control. But to-day the Negro popula- 
tion is rapidly increasing from without, and promises 
to be, for some years at least, the largest racial element. 
Washington Street, the eastern boundary of this 
section, is a crowded business thoroughfare of stores 
and tenements, and on Tremont Street, at the west. 



148 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the ground floors are generally occupied by shops. Not 
many of the Negroes live on these main avenues, 
however; and elsewhere the locality is for the most 
part light, open, and airy. As respects housing, Boston 
has in fact done the Negroes a good turn. Their being 
forced out of the deteriorated districts in the West 
End and lower South End, after the manner which 
has been related, made it possible for them to com- 
bine and take possession of this new outlying neighbor- 
hood, which was at that time being built up with an 
exceptionally good type of tenement house, wide and 
quiet streets, and considerable free space with trees 
and grass. The section is not characterized by the con- 
gestion and general unsightliness which prevail in the 
Jewish and Italian, and some of the poorer Irish, 
quarters, to which it is indeed distinctly superior. 
Probably in no other large city is the chief Negro col- 
ony so fortunately located. Not only does this mean 
much from the point of view of the inner standards of 
living and of life of this element of the population; it 
means also that the colony is not fringed with that 
deadly penumbra of the degenerate outcasts of all na- 
tionalities which usually besets a downtown Negro 
quarter. 

Within the city only one other Negro community 
stands out conspicuously. That is the one about Dart- 
mouth Street, from the Back Bay Station to Colum- 
bus Avenue, extending through Buckingham Street to 
the north, and through Harwich, Truro, Yarmouth, 
Holyoke, and Carlton Streets to the south. Negroes of 
the better class took up their residence on Bucking- 
ham Street soon after that area was taken from the 



TAKING ROOT 149 

water and made into land, in the later sixties. Before 
very long they got into the adjacent part of Dart- 
mouth Street. The inclusion of the other streets men- 
tioned, which were formerly given up to white lodging- 
houses, is a development of the last six or seven years. 
The building of the present Back Bay Station in 1897 
involved the tearing-down of the buildings on Bucking- 
ham Street, nearly all of which were owned by Negroes, 
who in most cases subsequently bought homes in the 
suburbs. The erection of this station also brought to 
the locality many Pullman porters and other railway 
employees. Especially after the opening in 1906 of the 
only full-fledged Negro hotel in the city,^ this section 
has been transformed from one of quiet residence into 
the abode and rendezvous of a nomadic, boisterous, 
sporting set. It is the Negro "Lower Broadway" of 
Boston. 

The rise of Negro communities in the suburbs since 
the war has been marked. Of the 3495 Negroes in the 
metropolitan district in 1865, about 67 per cent were 
inside the present boundaries of Boston proper. In 
the decade 1865-75, the rates of increase within and 
without the city limits were nearly the same, but from 
1875 to 1895 the rate of suburban growth was twice 
that for the city proper. Though since 1895 the sub- 
urban rate has been above 4 per cent less than the 
urban, the proportion of Negroes living in the sub- 
urbs is to-day 42 per cent, as compared with 33 per 
cent in 1865.^ 

1 This hotel was closed in 1912 by the Licensing Board, on 
account of disorderliness. 

* For detailed figures, see Appendix, tables II and III. 



150 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

It is probable that in the earlier period one of the 
principal considerations which led the Negroes to settle 
in the suburbs was that, coming direct from the rural 
districts and small towns of the South, they found 
suburban conditions somewhat less strange and per- 
plexing than those of the city. In the last twenty years 
or so, however, since the marked development of an 
urban movement of Negroes in the South, most of the 
Negro immigrants to Boston have, as previously 
noted, come from the cities; and as shown by the 
lesser rate of increase of the Negro population in the 
suburbs, a larger proportion of the newcomers have 
preferred to take up their abode in Boston proper, 
where they find larger numbers of their own kind, and 
greater novelty and excitement. But this tendency has 
been more than offset by a continuous secondary 
movement of Negroes away from the in-town sections 
of Boston into the outlying districts.^ Among the rea- 
sons for this outward migration have been the preva- 
lence of lower rents in the suburbs, and, in the case of 
the more well-to-do class, the opportunity to buy homes 
at a lower price and in localities of higher grade. A fur- 
ther potent influence, among the better element, is the 
desire of the latter to get their children into cleaner, 
more healthful, and morally safer surroundings. It is 
also a pertinent fact that, generally speaking, the Ne- 
groes encounter less antipathy in the suburbs and find 
the various avenues of self-improvement more access- 
ible to them. 

In point of numbers, the growth of these suburban 
communities did not become conspicuous — except in 
' See Appendix, notes to table III. 



TAKING ROOT 151 

the case of Cambridge, the Negro population of which 
jumped in the first decade after the war from 377 to 
1103 — till 1890. Between 1890 and 1895, a number of 
other good-sized colonies arose. Cambridge still leads, 
having to-day about 5000 Negro inhabitants. Most of 
these live in Cambridgeport, between Hampshire Street 
on the north, and the Charles River, in the vicinity of 
Howard Street, on the south. Within these points are 
several major, and a number of minor, groups. There 
are also some small clusters scattered in other parts 
of Cambridge. With the exception of a broken-down 
shanty quarter about Hastings Street, the housing 
conditions are good. Tenements are uncommon; me- 
dium-sized, one or two family dwellings are the rule. 
Some of the streets where the more well-to-do Negroes 
live are fully up to the standard of streets occupied by 
the lower middle class of whites. The other principal 
suburban colonies, with their numbers as reported in 
the 1910 census, are as follows: Everett, 795; Maiden, 
486; Newton, 467; Medford, 431; Woburn, 242; Chel- 
sea, 242; Brookline, 221; Somerville, 217. The condi- 
tions in these communities are essentially the same as 
those in Cambridge. 

Instances of Negroes living outside of distinctively 
Negro neighborhoods were exceedingly rare till from 
twenty to thirty years after the war. Then the num- 
ber of such cases began gradually to increase, and to- 
day from 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the Negroes in 
Greater Boston live in neighborhoods predominantly 
white. Sometimes a single street or section of a street, 
or sections of several adjacent streets, are occupied 
by Negroes, with no others of that race on any of the 



152 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

other streets within a wide radius. More frequently 
a small contingent of Negro families will be interspersed 
among the white residents in a neighborhood. Both 
these conditions may be found in Boston proper, 
through the middle South End from Dover Street south 
to Massachusetts Avenue and between Columbus Ave- 
nue and the railroad, and in the Charlestown, East 
Boston, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Dorchester, and 
Brighton districts. Such is still more noticeably the 
case in most of the suburbs. 

Racial intermixture in the matter of residence has, 
however, progressed still further. It is by no means 
uncommon to find two or three Negro families, or 
even a solitary one, entirely surrounded by white 
neighbors, with no others of their own race in the lo- 
cality. In fact, a section half a mile square which does 
not contain at least one Negro home is exceptional in 
any but the most select parts of the metropolitan dis- 
trict. The geographical points of contact between the 
Negro and white population have thus been multiplied 
many -fold, and, so far as concerns conditions of resi- 
dence, the process of racial inter-articulation has 
reached an advanced stage. 

In this connection, passing allusion has already been 
made to the more or less diflBculty which Negroes ex- 
perience in getting into sections outside their own 
compact colonies, on account of the unwillingness of the 
other race to have them as neighbors. Such an atti- 
tude on the part of the whites is undoubtedly a serious 
factor against which the Negroes have had to contend. 
In general the degree of difficulty which they have en- 
countered has been in proportion to the social grade 



TAKING ROOT 153 

of the locality in view. Frequently the only way in 
which a Negro family can obtain entry in a given neigh- 
borhood is by buying a home there, at a price which is 
usually somewhat above the market value. Even in 
the case of such purchase, the transaction is often made 
through second parties, without the seller's knowledge 
of the buyer's racial identity. Now and then efforts 
are made to keep Negroes out of given localities by 
some process of law. Thus far, however, such attempts 
have been almost wholly unsuccessful, and have turned 
out rather to the Negro's advantage; as, for example, 
in the most recent case of this kind, which resulted in a 
pronouncement by the State Supreme Judicial Court 
upholding the right of a Negro to acquire property 
and to make his home wherever he chooses.^ It is true 

' This decision was handed down March 5, 1913. The details 
are covered in the following account taken from the Boston Tran- 
script of that date : — 

"That a Negro may purchase a house in a section where expen- 
sive houses have been built by white people if the owner desires to 
sell, regardless of whether it annoys the neighbors, is decided by the 
Supreme Court in an opinion handed down to-day. 

"The question arose in a bill in equity brought by Wellington 
Holbrook and others against Mrs. Mamie C. Morrison. The plain- 
tiffs asked for an injunction restraining Mrs. Morrison from display- 
ing a large sign on her premises headed ' For Sale,' and concluding 
with the words, 'Best offer from Colored Family,' all in large letters, 
and also from advertising in the newspapers that her property was 
for sale to Negro people. 

"In the opinion of the court. Judge Morton says: 'There can be 
no doubt that the respondent had the right to advertise her prop- 
erty for sale by signs or otherwise in the ordinary way and to sell it 
if she saw fit to a Negro family, even though the effect may be to 
impair the business of the complainants; just as, for instance, the 
owner of land on a hillside may cultivate it in the usual way, even 
though the effect of the surface drainage may be to fill up his neigh- 
bors' mill-pond below. If she had put up the sign and had caused 
advertisements to be inserted without any intention of selling her 



154 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

that the coming of Negroes into a white neighborhood 
of good quality usually has somewhat of a tendency 
to lower the selling value of property in the immediate 
vicinity. But this result is not marked unless more 
than a few families of that race enter the locality, and 
live near enough together to attract notice to their 
number. 

When all is said, the objection to the presence of 
Negroes in districts predominantly white has come 
nowhere near amounting to outright prohibition or 
ostracism. It has, as previously stated, been a serious 
factor against which they have had to contend. It 
has forced them to exert themselves in locating their 
homes. It has often compelled them to try a long time 
before they have succeeded in establishing their abodes 
in the locality of their preference, and sometimes it has 
obliged them to fall back upon their second, third, or 
fourth choice. It has necessitated considerable resort 
to strategy on their part. But that is all. On the other 
hand, the degree to which they have succeeded in over- 
coming this adverse influence has appeared in the facts 
which have been given with regard to their increasingly 
wide and scattered distribution. On the principle of 
the entering wedge, as has previously been pointed out, 

property, but solely with the purpose of injuring the business and 
property of the complainants, then there can be no doubt that such 
conduct on her part would have been actionable. She has a right to 
ask for bids from white people or colored people, or both. She is not 
limited to bidders of any particular race or class or creed. And if one 
of her purposes in asking for bids from colored families is to injure 
and annoy the complainants, and she succeeds in doing so, her con- 
duct is not rendered unlawful so long as her object is to procure a 
purchaser for and to sell her house and lot.' 

"The Court ordered the bill of the complainants to be dismissed." 



TAKING ROOT 155 

each Negro who locates his home in a new neighborhood 
makes entry less difficult for others of his race. Such 
being the case, the actual detrimental effect of this 
factor upon the Negro may be expected to diminish 
rather than to increase. 

Looking into the future, it appears practically cer- 
tain that for the next generation, at least, the Negro 
community will still consist mainly of immigrants from 
the South and their immediate offspring, working out 
their destiny in Boston. But that at the same time 
substantial progress will be made toward the establish- 
ment of a native Boston stock also appears highly 
probable. Among the principal influences contributing 
toward this result will be less emigration, on the one 
hand, and less immigration, on the other; the former 
factor working positively, the latter negatively, to in- 
crease the proportion of the native-descended element. 
With reference to emigration, though definite figures 
are not available at this writing for the period since 
1900, general report, together with the author's own 
inquiries and observation, are to the effect that, owing 
largely to the already noted improvement in the Negro's 
residential and living conditions in Boston, a consider- 
able diminution is taking place in the outward move- 
ment to other localities. In the matter of immigration, 
the facts are definitely at hand. While from 1890 to 
1900 the yearly immigration of Negroes to the Greater 
Boston district was about 1000, from 1900 to 1910 it 
declined to about 500.^ This falling off, which is partly 
a general tendency throughout the North, has been due, 
on the one hand, to the growth of the "Stick to the 
^ For detailed figures of immigration, see Appendix, table VII. 



156 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

South" spirit, and, on the other hand, to the realiza- 
tion, at last, that it is not so easy to get along in the 
North as has hitherto been supposed. 

As to the birth rate among the Negroes in Boston, 
there has been a decided gain since ante-bellum days. 
Whereas in the period 1855-59, as previously stated, 
the number of births was one less than the number of 
marriages, to-day the births exceed the marriages by 
nearly seven in every thousand of the population. 
Recently, however, the birth rate has on the whole 
declined somewhat, and it is reasonable to believe that 
a rising standard of living will at least work against sub- 
stantial increase. But, as already remarked, the birth 
rate of the Negroes is at present only slightly below 
that of the population as a whole, and is no doubt above 
that of the native-descended whites, so that, compara- 
tively speaking at least, the Negro is not on this score 
very badly off. The crucial factor which has hitherto 
made it impossible for the Negro population of Boston to 
grow upon its own native base, has been the extremely 
high death rate. At this most essential point, however, 
a great amelioration has taken place during the last 
twenty-five years. Since 1885, the Negro death rate 
has undergone a continued and marked decline. For 
the period 1885-90, it was 36.2 per thousand ; for 1890- 
95, 32.1; for 1895-1900, 27.9; for 1900-05, 26.5; and 
for 1905-10, 24.3.^ Whereas for the years 1855-59 the 
deaths were double the births in number, to-day the 
deaths do not exceed the births at all,^ and the ten- 

1 For detailed birth and death figures, see Appendix, tables 
XII and XIII. 

^ This is on the basis of the average birth and death rates from 
1900 to 1910, previously given. 



TAKING ROOT 157 

dency, as shown by the figures just cited, is distinctly 
toward further decrease. This reduction in the death 
rate has been due chiefly to the steady betterment of 
both exterior residential environment and interior 
housing and living conditions among the Negroes. The 
constantly improving sanitation of the community 
at large, especially as respects preventive hygiene, has 
of course affected and will continue to affect this race 
along with other elements of the population. Thus 
a still further gradual diminution in the death rate 
among the Negroes, eventually leaving a substantial 
excess of births, may reasonably be expected. 

As a net result, therefore, of these several favorable 
tendencies, operating in conjunction, it appears to be a 
fact that now at last, after two hundred and seventy- 
five years, the Negro is taking root amidst the Northern 
city conditions of Boston. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND ETHICAL GROWTH 

Necessarily prerequisite to an adequate under- 
standing of the more distinctly religious, political, and 
economic aspects of the life of the Negro in Boston, is 
an appreciation of those less definable features which 
can only be designated as social-ethical in a broad and 
fundamental sense, but which both overspread and 
underlie the others. What, then, are the general char- 
acteristics and conditions of this nature which pertain 
to this element of the population, and what are the 
resulting tendencies? It having already appeared that 
the local Negro colony is in a fair way to become 
soundly established on a physical basis, is now any simi- 
lar foundational process discernible in the higher sphere 
of the social order? Do the Negro people give evidence 
that they are drawing together, through some centripe- 
tal impulse, for purposes of closer and more effective or- 
ganization as a social body? Are they laying a ground- 
work, along essentially constructive lines, for durable 
social progress? And — what is of the most central and 
vital importance — are the ethical motives, concep- 
tions, and standards, which both arise from and inti- 
mately react upon social relations, growing constantly 
stronger, more clearly defined, and of more extensive 
and practical application and effect, in the well-being 
of the Negro community? 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 159 

Section 1. Characteristics that Retard 

In any capacity for such fundamental social coopera- 
tion as is essential to a strong and closely woven social 
fabric, the Negroes are, as a matter of fact, conspicu- 
ously deficient. No other racial group in the city is so 
much given to petty dissension, and so obviously lack- 
ing in unity and the spirit of unity. 

The members of this race are excessively disposed to 
circulating gossip and slander about one another and 
generally to depreciating one another's conduct and 
character. Apparently they cannot help doing this; — 
at least, not unless they exercise unwonted self-control. 
A white woman who has very close acquaintance with 
the Negroes in Boston, who has lived and worked among 
them a long time, expressed herself thus: "What 
things they say about each other ! What lies they tell ! 
Why, if I were to believe half I hear, I should have to 
conclude that all the Negroes I know are libertines, 
liars, and thieves." Few, indeed, are the fortunate 
ones whose characters are not besmirched by some of 
their fellows. The gossip-mongers let their fancies 
wander as their tongue wags. Yet one cannot avoid 
surmising that down underneath so much dirty smoke 
there must be some smudgy fuel. 

Likewise, the Negroes are jealous of one another, 
and prone to weaken one another's hands. Let one of 
them make a proposal or initiate an enterprise appeal- 
ing for general support, and immediately detractors 
arise, to cast aspersions on his motives and to propose 
something different. There is continual pulling apart, 
constant discord, a pitiable lack of cooperation. In 



160 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

illustration of this failing may be cited a story which is 
related of an old Negro deacon in the South, who had 
the reputation of being mighty in prayer, and able to 
pray longer, louder, and more fervently than any one 
else in all the region roundabout. On a certain special 
occasion he was expected to make one of his very best 
efforts. First he offered up thanks for everything he 
could think of. Then he prayed for the bestowal of all 
possible blessings. It seemed as though nothing had 
been omitted, but that, on the contrary, mention had 
been made of a great number of items which might 
possibly, in a general dispensation, have escaped at- 
tention. But finally, at the end, after the " amen" had 
been said, the suppliant added a sort of apologetic post- 
script, to this effect: " Lord, there was one other thing 
that I was thinking of asking you to do, but. Lord, 
I concluded that would be seeking too much : — I was 
going to ask you to make the colored folks stop talking 
about one another and fighting one another, and get 
together." 

This shortcoming is sometimes explained as one of 
the evil effects of slavery. Slaveowners, to prevent idl- 
ing and to thwart all attempts at concerted revolt, 
are said to have fostered suspicions, jealousies, and 
quarrels, and to have encouraged the slaves to spy 
and bear tales on one another. Missionaries and 
others who have lived in Africa, however, testify that 
the natives there exhibit similar traits. Thus the truth 
appears to be that slavery helped to perpetuate, and 
perhaps exaggerated, a natural propensity. 

But the conditions of slavery must be held in large 
degree accountable for another characteristic of the 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 161 

Negroes; — namely, their extreme dependence on the 
whites. Was it not inevitable that two hundred and 
jBfty years of servitude, during which the members of 
this race were completely under the direction and provi- 
dence of the whites, experiencing no necessity for fore- 
thought, and having no rights, no property, no social 
organization of their own, should smother in them any 
quality of self-reliance? This weakness amounts, in its 
least modified form, to the servility which peculiarly 
fits Negroes for menial service. Among the more re- 
fined class, it often shows itself in an obsequiousness 
which detracts from respect. But the dependence of 
the Negroes is most of all evident in their hesitancy 
and frequent inability to take on their own initiative, 
without seeking the support of the whites, action de- 
parting from the accustomed routine or involving 
special responsibility. They are sadly distrustful of 
their own capacities. 

Sometimes, however, this quality of servility is ac- 
companied or replaced by a bumptious over-assert- 
iveness. These two traits might appear to be mutu- 
ally contradictory. But in fact the second is in a large 
degree a result of the first, by a natural enough pro- 
cess of reaction. In the same way that some extremely 
diffident persons, from more or less conscious motives 
of self-protection, assume an opposite bearing, so like- 
wise many Negroes, as a sort of offset and antidote for 
their sense of humiliation, put on a lofty air, which, at 
first affected, tends gradually to become ingrained. 
More commonly, however, the process is less subtly 
introspective in character, and is produced by the 
exterior change from Southern to Northern conditions. 



162 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

When a Negro comes from the South, where in nearly 
every way he has been subjected to discrimination and 
repression, into the North, where his Hberties are in 
so many respects equal to those of the whites, what 
wonder that he is sometimes unable to hold himself in 
check, and that he frequently becomes no less over- 
weening than he was formerly submissive ! The more 
abrupt the break, the more extreme the reaction. Thus 
in the national capital, where the Negroes of Maryland 
and Virginia have but to step across the borders of 
those states to find themselves at once free from South- 
ern restraint and under the protection of federal laws 
which forbid discriminatory treatment, considerable 
complaint is heard that they sometimes crowd white 
people off the sidewalks, make insolent remarks, and 
indulge generally in offensive conduct. In Boston, such 
behavior is not much in evidence, but in less glaring 
ways the same propensity is shown. It even crops out 
in a precocious touchiness among children; as in the 
case of a little tot of six or seven, who, when asked by 
his teacher if he would please to pick up a handker- 
chief she had dropped, declined to do so, with the 
pronunciamento, — "The days of slavery are over." 
It appears in the proverbial uppishness of Negro do- 
mestics, and in the patronizing officiousness of such 
exalted functionaries as, for example, head bell-boys. 
Pomposity of this kind, while far from being general 
among the Negro people, is nevertheless sufficiently 
common to make an unduly adverse impression on 
the other race, and thereby to arouse antipathy among 
many who would otherwise be inclined toward a more 
friendly and helpful attitude. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 163 

In any genuine and substantial pride of race, on the 
other hand, as distinguished from mere petty self- 
inflation, the Negroes are as yet woefully lacking. It 
is, of course, readily understandable that a people with 
two and a half centuries of servitude only fifty years in 
the past, could not yet have developed race pride in 
any high degree. Furthermore, the peculiarly humiliat- 
ing conditions to which this element of the population 
have been subjected since their emancipation, have 
made the subsequent rise of racial dignity well-nigh 
impossible. Past influences might, indeed, be calcu- 
lated to have imbued the Negroes with a conscious- 
ness of degradation as a people, and to have implanted 
in them an instinctive desire to get away from the fact 
of their racial identity. And such is, in truth, the case. 

The want of race pride appears most plainly in a 
shrinking from acceptance of the racial name itself 
— the very word "Negro." Among the rank and file, 
predominantly of Southern birth or upbringing, such 
avoidance of this term is less noticeable, and amounts 
commonly to no more than a negative first impulse, 
easily overcome. But in the upper gradations of the 
Negro community, and generally speaking in measure 
proportioned to the elements of superior education, 
refinement. Northern rearing, lightness of complexion, 
and an admixture of white blood, objection to the word 
becomes deep-seated, positive, and even vehement. 
Members of the race who are marked by these charac- 
teristics look upon the designation "Negro" as merely 
the polite form of "nigger," and see in it mainly the 
suggestion of contempt. To escape using the word, 
they either resort to circumlocution or have recourse 



164 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

to substitutes. Some effort has been made to introduce 
the term "Afro- American," but with slight success, as 
it is too awkward to be convenient. "Colored people " 
— an expression doubtless tracing its origin from the 
"free persons of color" of the period preceding general 
emancipation — is the makeshift generally employed; 
without regard to the fact that this appellation utterly 
fails to distinguish the Negroes from the Chinese, the 
Indians, or, for that matter, from any of the non-Cau- 
casian peoples. The fact that most white persons when 
speaking to Negroes likewise refer to members of that 
race as "colored," out of consideration for their sensi- 
tiveness regarding this matter, is naturally enough 
interpreted by the latter as confirming their own ob- 
jection to the name " Negro" as a stigma of debase- 
ment. The lack of a real race pride, which is implied 
in this attempt to disavow what is in fact only a legiti- 
mate racial designation,^ is still further revealed at prac- 
tically every point in the life of the Negro community. 
The foregoing characteristics and deficiencies, both 
severally and to a still greater degree when operating 
in conjunction, are in their influence and effect dis- 
tinctly divisive. They constitute impediments to 
social progress which are, for the present at least, of a 
more or less inherent nature; and against which the 
Negroes must contend in their endeavors toward social 
cooperation and cohesion. Of all these hindrances, how- 
ever, the want of a substantial increment of racial 
dignity is the one which most seriously retards the ad- 
vance of the Negro people. 

* " Negro" is the recognized ethnological name of the African race 
from which most of the American Negroes are descended. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 165 

Section 2. Nativity Groups and Social Gradations 

No less pertinent, however, than these innate ele- 
ments of character, in connection with the social de- 
velopment of the Negroes, are the conditions from 
which the members of this race have come, and those 
under which they are living to-day. An adequate 
understanding of these conditions will be promoted by 
some separate consideration first of the diflPerent na- 
tivity groups which, as has previously appeared, enter 
into the composition of Boston's Negro population; 
and then of the several social gradations into which 
this population may be divided. 

With regard to circumstances arising from nativity, 
it must be said that the mass of immigrants from the 
South, who, as already pointed out, make up the main 
part of Boston's Negro colony, have always been but 
pitifully equipped for life's stern encounter. Those 
who came to the city in the first ten years after the war 
were for the most part former slaves and children of 
slaves, and the majority of those who are coming to- 
day are but the grandchildren of slaves. Nor, in the 
less than fifty years since bond slavery was declared 
abolished, has the lot of the great majority of the 
Negroes in the Southern States ceased to be slavish still. 
Though it is true that in that section the race is mak- 
ing remarkable headway in specific respects, and pro- 
ducing many capable individuals, nevertheless as yet 
the conditions which there prevail can in general hardly 
be said to have become such as to develop any consider- 
able degree of intelligence, ability, and strength of char- 
acter, in the average Negro. 



166 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

During the first thirty years following the war, how- 
ever, a larger proportion of the Southern immigrants 
who took up their abode in Boston were possessed of 
rough native ability than has been the case during the 
last fifteen to twenty years. Many of those who came 
in the earlier period did so not primarily because they 
found it too hard to make a living in the South, but 
because they hoped to do still better in the North, the 
great Land of Freedom, and especially in Boston, the 
Mecca of the Negro people. There were more in those 
days who had trades or could do work above the com- 
mon labor grade, and who were therefore in a position 
to earn better wages and to live better. In recent years, 
one of the most striking developments in the South 
itself has been the flocking of Negroes to the large cities, 
where most of them have been able to get only menial 
employment, where they have been herded together 
in the poorest districts, and where disease, a high death 
rate, crime, and immorality have wrought constant 
havoc among them. Since 1895 most of the immigrants 
to Boston have corne directly from these Southern 
cities, and, furthermore, have been of the poorer 
classes. The majoritj'^ of those who come to Boston 
to-day do so no more in the hope of faring better than 
in the belief that they cannot fare worse. 

Of the Northern-born Negroes in Boston, those who 
come from other Northern States and from other 
points in Massachusetts are generally better edu- 
cated than the Southern and foreign-born types. But 
Ut the same time many of them are of the sort who are 
not deeply rooted anywhere; who if occasion arises 
can easily pull up stakes and move away; and whose 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 167 

interest in the local community of their race is on the 
whole of a transient character. 

The Negroes born and reared in the Greater Boston 
district have the best education, and, as a class, are 
indeed generally superior. Their worth is obscured to 
the general view, however, by the overshadowing pro- 
portion of Negroes of non-Boston and principally South- 
ern birth. As has already appeared from the nativity 
figures previously given, the Boston-born element 
constitute about twenty per cent of the entire Negro 
population. Approximately two thirds of this element, 
however, are still under fifteen years of age, and of the 
remaining one third the great majority are still under 
thirty. This means that out of every hundred Negroes 
in the city, only three or four are at once of Boston 
birth and of an age at which they may be expected to 
have obtained a fair start in life. Nevertheless if a com- 
plete list could be made of the members of the race 
who occupy good positions, and who have good homes 
and good characters, it would, in the writer's opinion, 
piTove conclusively that the Boston-born element has 
at least double that quota of successful individuals. 
Such partial evidence as is at hand tends to confirm 
this belief.^ 

If such is the fact, it would seem to refute the oft- 
made assertion that Northern conditions spoil the 
Negroes. It does disprove it in part, but not entirely. 
Conditions in Boston are so much more favorable to 
the Negro than they are in the South, especially with 

* For example, out of 46 Nefrro clerks and carriers in the post- 
oflBce of the Boston postal district, 8, or 17 per cent, were bora 
in Greater Boston, and 17, or 37 per cent, are of Northern birth. 



168 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

respect to facilities for education and opportunities 
for entering superior occupations, that Negroes of 
Boston birth should produce a percentage of success- 
ful men and women not only twice but five times as 
large as their proportion of the total Negro population.^ 
This, however, is probably not the case. Northern 
city conditions have their negative side for the Negroes 
in general by tempting them to sacrifice substance to 
appearance. Since they may come and go freely in the 
community, they have naturally taken for themselves 
the community's general standards. So far as they 
have tried to live up to these standards in solid achieve- 
ment and genuine merit, they have thereby been bene- 
fited. Undoubtedly this spur accounts for many suc- 
cesses. Many Negroes, however, have been carried 
away by mere superficialities, particularly dress and 
display, and have devoted far more attention to such 
things than to the cultivation of character and effi- 
ciency. But, when all is said, those who have been 
spoiled in this way are distinctly in the minority. 

Within certain limits, — which are, however, not 
very extensive, — it holds true that the Negroes of 
Boston descent hold themselves rather apart and 
aloof from the others, and are in fact somewhat dis- 
tinguished by special characteristics. In this connec- 
tion, it must of course be borne in mind that, as al- 
ready pointed out, the number of those in the Negro 
community who can go back to more than one genera- 
tion of Boston ancestry is exceedingly small. But with 
regard to the few such that there are, the writer has 
been struck by certain points of comparison and re- 

* That is, having regard to the factor of age, as above indicated. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 169 

semblance as between them and many of the present 
representatives of some of Boston's farthest descended 
families of the other race. Types of the latter may be 
seen about the select clubs on Beacon Hill, in the 
Athenseum Library, or at highly intellectual lectures 
or gatherings. They are often characterized by spare- 
ness of body and a thin, pointed, and distinctively 
mental cast of features. Everything about them sug- 
gests thought and introspection and a long-sustained 
process of inward self -consumption. Now some of the 
Negroes, claiming two or three generations of ances- 
tors who have lived and died in Boston's intellectually 
rarified atmosphere, have impressed the writer as pre- 
senting an appearance similar to this, in kind if not 
in degree. Whether this likeness would hold good under 
further examination is a question. The observation 
is submitted suggestively, rather than scientifically. 

The nativity group which is made up of Negroes of 
foreign birth possesses a special interest, in that it is as 
yet comparatively little known to the general public. 
The British West Indians, who form somewhat its 
largest element, differ noticeably from the American 
Negroes in appearance, usually having higher cheek 
bones and a firmer cast of features, and their dialect is 
often so different that at first it cannot readily be 
understood. They are clannish in their associations. 
Most of them are not naturalized, the plea of such as 
are not completely indifferent being that they expect 
to return to the Islands, as indeed many of them do. 
The fact that the majority are Roman Catholics and 
Episcopalians draws something further of a dividing 
line between them and their predominantly Baptist 



170 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

and Methodist cousins. They pride themselves on their 
longer possession of freedom, which dates practically 
from the passage of the British Emancipation Act in 
1833, Conditions in the West Indies have, besides, 
been more favorable in many ways to the Negro's 
development. There the members of this race have 
formed not so much an ostracized class without any 
recognized standing, as one of the horizontal layers 
in the social strata. As a result, the higher avenues of 
accomplishment have been less difficult of access to 
them. The immigrants who come to Boston from that 
quarter appear to hold their heads higher, and to 
have more independence, stamina, progressiveness, 
and — better side of their clannish tendency — coop- 
erativeness, than is the case with those from the 
South. A large proportion of them are marked by a 
general sturdiness and worth of character, and their 
upper ranks include a number of exceptionally capable 
individuals.^ On the other hand, there is a rowdyish 
and disorderly contingent, composed for the most part 

^ A good example of the middle grade is Peter Burke, of Chelsea. 
From the Islands he went to England as a sailor, remained there a 
little while, then, about twenty years ago, came to Boston. For six 
years thereafter he served in the navy, and since that time, having 
married, he has worked as a teamster, fireman, and watchman, and 
has managed to support his family comfortably. He has three child- 
ren, the eldest a girl of thirteen, and intends to give them as good an 
education as his means will permit. 

Among the West Indinns who are well known in the Negro com- 
munity are George W. Latimer, the lawyer (though, strictly speaking, 
he is from the Danish island of St. Croix), who came to Boston 
about 188G, and obtained his legal education at the Y.M.C.A. law 
school; E. I. Wright, T. E. A. McCurdy, and A. H. Hunt, physi- 
cians; A. C. Dunning and Don J. Pinheiro, dentists; and the Rev. 
M. A. N. Shaw, pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 171 

of sailors and porters who come and go on the fruit 
steamers. 

Withal, the West Indians constitute for the Negroes 
of the United States the representatively American 
problem of the assimilation of the foreigner. Among 
them are several beneficial and relief organizations, as 
well as a literary society and a cricket club, which, 
however, do not aim to Americanize their members, 
but rather to have them retain their British citizenship 
and their distinct affiliations. Deeper factors are 
nevertheless working for amalgamation. One of these 
is the intermarriage of West Indian and American 
Negroes. Another is the increasing attention which the 
politicians of the race are giving to the naturalization 
of this group of potential voters. 

A majority of the Negro immigrants from Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick, who rank a close second to 
the West Indians in number, are the progeny of slaves 
who during Abolition days escaped into Canada by the 
Underground Railway. Others are the offspring of 
West Indian Negroes who migrated to the Provinces. 
A few are descendants of those of their race whom the 
English troops carried away when driven out of 
Boston by the Revolutionists. From another part of 
Canada, namely, Ontario and Quebec, come a small 
number of Negroes, most of whom are the issue of 
refugees who fled thither in the ante-slavery period.^ 
In education the Canadian immigrants are superior 
to those from the South, for they have grown up under 

^ Not a few of the fugitive slaves who settled in these two pro- 
vinces married white women, for the natural reason that women of 
their own race were almost an absent quantity in that region. 



172 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

a system of compulsory school attendance. In other 
respects, they are on approximately the same level. 
They manifest no special affinity among themselves, 
and mix readily with their American cousins. 

Boston's Negro population also includes a hundred 
or two persons whom the census designates as "Afri- 
cans." Most of these are natives of the Portuguese 
Islands of Cape Verde, which lie off the West Coast of 
Africa. They are of mixed blood, being descended on 
the one hand from the slaves who were originally 
taken to these islands, and on the other from the 
Portuguese colonists who have intermarried with the 
Negroes since slavery was abolished. In appearance, 
they range from individuals who at first glance would 
be set down as Negroes, to such as would at once be 
taken for Portuguese or Spaniards. The majority are 
sailors, who tarry only between voyages, but some 
have taken up their permanent abode in Boston. In 
religious faith, they are Roman Catholics.^ They 
keep by themselves and do not affiliate much with 
the American Negroes, though as a rule they live 
in Negro districts. The police say that these African- 
Portuguese give them next to no trouble, and that as a 
class they are intelligent and self-respecting. Besides 
this rather ambiguous element, there is among the 
African immigrants a very small proportion who come 
from Liberia or other parts of the Dark Continent. ^ 

^ Attending the Church of St. John the Baptist, in the North 
End. 

^ The writer has been impressed by the mariced intelhgence and 
capacity of the several native Africans whom he has met in Boston. 
It must be borne in mind, of course, that only the most promising 
or enterprising individuals could make their way from that continent 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 173 

Finally, besides those from the West Indies, Canada 
and Africa, a few Negroes may be found who hail from 
still other quarters of the globe. ^ 

Such, then, is the human material, dififerentiated as 
respects nativity, of which Boston's Negro commun- 
ity is composed. This material, it appears, instead of 
being of a single monotonous character, as those of the 
other race who are not closely acquainted with the 
facts are wont to assume, is, on the contrary, by no 

to America. Most frequently they are sent here to be educated at 
the expense of churches and missionary societies. One such the writer 
came upon the day following his arrival; he could not speak a word 
of English, and bore upon his body the sign of his tribe, which had 
been branded into the flesh. His way was being paid, in part, by one 
of the Negro churches in Boston, and he was going to Tuskegee In- 
stitute, thence to carry back to his people the seeds of industrial 
progress. Tuskegee and other institutions have in the total a con- 
siderable number of African students. Recently a native Zulu won 
high honors in oratory at Columbia University, and subsequently 
delivered a series of public lectures. 

One of the most interesting native Africans who has ever appeared 
in Boston is Dihdwo Twe, a member of the native Kroo tribe of 
the Liberian hinterland. He is a young man, who came to this city 
several years ago to attend the Burdett Business College, with the 
object of returning to Liberia and going into business with his 
father, who is an exporter of mahogany. That he will make his mark 
no one who has met him doubts. In appearance he is most pleasing; 
of a dark brown complexion, features broad but reflned, and expres- 
sion alert. His voice is soft and musical, his manners irreproach- 
able, his dress immaculate. Most remarkable of all, however, is 
his use of the English language, especially in writing, where he is 
not hampered by the alien accent. His style is so imbued with an 
understanding of the inner meaning of words as to make it delight- 
ful to read. In the American Journal of Religious Fsyckology and 
Education for June, 1907, this young man had an article on African 
religions, and he has been engaged by the Independent to contribute 
some further articles on this and related subjects. He returned to his 
native land in November, 1909. 

1 As, for instance, Dr. Cornelius McKane, a Negro physician, re- 
cently deceased, who was born in British Guiana^ South America. 



174 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

means lacking in variety. The several large natal 
groups of which mention has been made have their 
more or less peculiar precedent conditions and distin- 
guishing characteristics. Thereby is derived, on the 
one hand, such social invigoration and stimulus as 
come from diversification and the contact of different 
elements. Evidently an active process of abrasion and 
fusion is going on within the Negro community itself, 
concurrently with the moulding and unifying effect of 
the exterior environment. On the other hand, there is 
also manifest within this race, though on a smaller 
scale and in a narrowed field, the same general problem 
of assimilation by which the American nation as a 
whole is confronted. 

Passing on now to the general social conditions, irre- 
spective of differences of nativity, under which the 
Negro inhabitants of Boston are living at present, it 
becomes necessary to undertake some further analysis 
of this element of the population, from the point of 
view, this time, of its social gradations. For while here 
again most white people think of the Negroes en masse, 
as a matter of fact there are clearly defined economic- 
social distinctions of class among them, with each class 
subject to somewhat different circumstances and 
having its particular rank and place in the total scheme 
of the Negro community. 

At the bottom of the scale is a deposit of those whose 
coming and going and mode of livelihood are obscure 
and ofttimes devious. This element is composed of the 
vicious, the utterly shiftless, and the hopelessly in- 
capable. It includes a large quota of chronic rovers, 
many of whom work their way to Boston on the coast- 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 175 

wise steamers. Its proportion of unmarried men and 
women is far greater than in the case of the Negro 
population as a whole. The members of this class live 
generally in questionable lodging-house sections in the 
downtown parts of the city. They supply most of the 
loafers in the open squares, about the streets, and in the 
saloons and so-called clubs. The bad impression which 
they make upon the public, by reason of their charac- 
ter and conduct, is out of all correspondence with their 
actual numbers. As a matter of fact, this contingent 
does not form, at most, more than ten per cent of the 
entire body of the city's Negro residents. 

Next come the rank and file, the common people. 
They are the men and women who want to advance, 
and who in the mass are advancing, slowly but surely. 
Their occupations are mostly those with which Ne- 
groes are usually associated — hotel and janitor work, 
domestic service, and rough labor — with some of 
higher grade. Their earnings ascend from less than the 
minimum requisite for bare subsistence, in which case 
resort must be had to the assistance of friends or to 
charity, to an amount sufficient to provide the com- 
mon comforts and pleasures. The poorer element 
among them, mostly young unmarried immigrants of 
both sexes, are lodgers, usually confined to one small 
room, picking up their meals here and there, and find- 
ing it next to impossible to live in a homelike manner. 
These lodgers are characterized by transiency of resi- 
dence, lack of responsible neighborhood ties and com- 
munity interests, and much aimless gadding about. 
Of the majority of the rank and file, who do not have 
to live quite in this manner, all but a small percentage 



176 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

are struggling tenants. Many, in spite of honest en- 
deavor, are unable to keep the rent paid promptly. 
On this account, and still more frequently through the 
search for employment, coupled with the desire to 
eliminate street-car fares, they are forced to move 
every little while, oftentimes to a section far distant 
from that of their previous abode. This shifting about 
hinders the growth of both home and neighborhood 
life. Even those who are able to remain in one place 
have not the means, even when they have the latent 
capacity, to furnish their quarters attractively. Neces- 
sity compels a large proportion of the women, wives 
and mothers, to go to work, which imposes a further 
obstacle to home-building. 

With the parents much away, what wonder that the 
children take to the streets? This undevelopment of 
home life among the Negroes, together with their need 
of relief from the daily round of toil and uncertainty, 
are factors which account negatively for the incessant 
visiting, going to parties and joining societies, of which 
later mention will be made from the point of view of 
their positive significance. Such social diversions, 
however, have to be of the most casual sort, as these 
Negroes in general have little assured leisure in which 
to cultivate life's amenities and acquire the substantial 
accomplishments. Their homes, however, are as a 
rule clean and tidy, and their children neatly clad.^ 
The Negroes of this class are in their bearing and con- 
duct at once self-respecting and unobtrusive. They are 
well aware of the disabilities under which they and 

' The tidiness of Negro women is usually traced to their domestic 
training under slavery. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 177 

their race labor in the community, but without any 
involved reasoning they accept these things as facts 
and go on with their day's work, — industrious, 
patient, serious of purpose, and withal cheerful in their 
outlook. 

The rank and file, thus characterized in a general 
way, is of course a large class, which emerges from the 
previously described lowest element at a point whose 
exact location must of necessity be arbitrary, and then 
gradually ascends till again, at the top, it shades im- 
perceptibly into the class above, from which, indeed, 
it can be divided only by another arbitrary line. It 
comprises a number of successive gradations within 
itself, each of which is roughly determined by the 
economic status of the individuals included. So far as 
any more specific measure is adducible, it probably 
consists of the intermittent or regular character of the 
industry of the men, combined with the degree of pres- 
sure to go out to work which rests upon the women 
— matters which will be more fully taken up later in 
their more immediate connection with other economic 
conditions. Viewed as a whole, however, this class 
may be estimated to form approximately seventy per 
cent of the entire Negro population. Such being the 
case, and with the hampering conditions which have 
been described in mind, it is evident that the circum- 
stances under which the great majority of the Negroes 
are living in Boston to-day, are such as greatly to re- 
tard the formation of a strong and healthy Negro com- 
munity. Whatever social progress the Negro people are 
making, they are accomplishing in the face of tre- 
mendous obstacles. 



178 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The most well-to-do of the Negro rank and file pass, 
as has already been said, into a middle class, which 
itself gains in distinctness as its own gradations 
ascend. This middle class forms approximately eight- 
een per cent of the Negro population. Its lower ranks 
are made up of waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and 
artisans, who, however, by dint of economy and good 
sense, have advanced to a point where they are assured 
of a comfortable Hying, and have a little fund laid up 
against the contingencies of the future. Next come 
clerical and lesser salaried employees, the smaller busi- 
ness proprietors, and the minor professional element. 
At the top, constituting as near an approach to a 
moneyed constituency as has yet evolved among the 
Negroes, stand the higher salaried employees, the more 
important business proprietors, some of the leading 
professional people, and the larger property owners. 
A goodly proportion of the members of this middle 
class own their homes. The number who are acquiring 
homes in superior outlying residential districts, often- 
times among white neighbors, is constantly increasing. 
A special motive which leads them to move into these 
better localities is the desire to get their children away 
from the moral dangers of the city streets. They are 
also influenced, however, by a willingness thus to pub- 
lish concrete evidence of a rise in the economic-social 
scale. 

Residence apart from the mass of their race, com- 
bined with their own attainment of a position some- 
what above the general struggle for livelihood, are 
factors which frequently have the effect of causing 
Negroes of this class to lose close touch and sympathy 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 179 

with the common run of their fellows. Especially in 
the case of the second generation, who are usually 
better educated, there is a tendency to gravitate 
toward what may be called the Negro upper class. 
The majority of the middle element, however, still 
reside in predominantly Negro districts, and will 
probably for many years continue to do so, as in these 
districts Negroes may acquire homes more readily and 
at less cost. These men and women, living in the midst 
of their race, fully conscious of its trials, its hopes, its 
achievements, are in fact the mainstay of the Negro 
community, and slowly but surely are developing 
sound leadership. Most of them are Southern born 
and bred, and so have grown up with an inner under- 
standing of the intrinsic reasons which account for con- 
ditions affecting their race. In education and refine- 
ment they are not too far above the majority of their 
people to make common cause with them and to be 
accepted by them. Though a great many have an 
admixture of Caucasian blood, the circumstances of 
their life have been such as to keep them from being 
in any appreciable measure deracialized. Their own 
accomplishment has shown them that, in spite of the 
Negro's peculiar adversities, success can be won. And 
their personal experience has freed them, for the most 
part, from bitterness. They are beginning to see the 
way ahead, and are commencing to preach, as they 
have themselves practiced, the gospel of salvation by 
solid achievement. 

Finally, there is the Negro upper class. Justice 
demands, however, that this element be distinguished 
from a sort of " smart set," which may be described as 



180 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

an excrescence growing out of the several classes which 
have been noted. There are a host of Negroes who 
labor to create an impression of superiority by dressing 
far beyond their means and by attempting to assume 
the ways of culture. The members of this race — so 
far as they have opportunity — naturally seek to 
attain polished manners. Such aspirations are entirely 
in their favor so long as they are kept within appro- 
priate limits. It is when they are perverted that they 
become objectionable. Many a Negro, who sports a 
silk hat and stick on Sunday, " totes" quarters of beef 
in the market on Monday. Time was when one was 
amazed at seeing on the street so many Negroes who 
had all the earmarks of the idle rich. But ere long one 
discovered that most of these persons were Pullman 
porters and hotel waiters. Once when the writer was 
having his shoes polished by a Negro bootblack, a typ- 
ical representative of the class passed by; indicating 
him with a jerk of the head, the bootblack remarked : 
" If I could buy that fellow for what he 's worth and sell 
him for what he thinks he 's worth, I 'd be able to retire 
from business." The propensity to display runs all 
through the Negro society and ascends from loudness 
of dress and extravagance of manner to an imitation of 
gentility so clever as to pass for real, till one catches a 
glimpse below the surface. These finished mimics con- 
stitute the " smart set" proper. They devote most of 
their time and money to aping the ways of white 
" society." They have many clubs with fancy and for- 
eign names, and give bals masques, tableaux vivants, 
and tournaments at bridge. Their daughters " study" 
music, art, or dramatics just long enough to make a 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 181 

show of being "accomplished." Their sons endeavor 
to look and act like college students or men-about- 
town. Lightness of complexion is almost indispensable 
to a place in this set, whose members taboo the word 
" Negro," always refer to themselves as " colored " " la- 
dies" and "gentlemen," and talk much of the slights 
to which they are subjected. So conspicuous do these 
characteristics make them that they greatly injure 
their race in the eyes of the public. 

The real Negro upper class — using this term, of 
course, in a suggestive sense — is an element little 
known and even less understood by the average white 
person, but one whose position is exceedingly interest- 
ing. It is made up of lawyers, physicians, salaried 
employees, business proprietors, literary and musical 
people, and the like, who are distinguished by superior 
education and refinement. This class comprises the 
remaining small quota — two per cent — of the Negro 
population. Not all, but the larger number of its 
members, are of Northern birth or long Northern resi- 
dence, have a considerable strain of white blood, and 
are of light complexion. Their attractive homes bear 
witness to their genuine good taste. The majority of 
this class live in superior residential districts, among 
white neighbors. In the practice of their vocations 
they not infrequently come into contact with the other 
race more than they do with Negroes. Further ac- 
quaintance with white people results from attendance 
at white churches and from membership in various 
white organizations. And, indeed, by virtue of their 
actually superior qualities and usually attractive per- 
sonalities, these men and women have many substan- 



182 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tial friendships with men and women of the other race. 
Their natural endowments, education, and conditions 
of life tend to divide them from the mass of the Ne- 
groes, and, in fact, most of them have comparatively 
little close association with the Negro rank and file. 
They are disposed, furthermore, as will later be shown 
in more detail, to cast aspersion on most forms of 
separate union among the Negro people along lines of 
voluntary racial segregation. They tend to keep within 
a small social circle of their own kind, while at the same 
time cultivating affiliation with the whites. Never- 
theless, they are wont to assume before the public the 
position of understanding intimately the conditions 
and needs of the Negro race, and of being its best ac- 
credited representatives. But the mass of the Negroes 
are well aware of their attitude of aloofness, and even 
while recognizing their superior attainments with min- 
gled feelings of envy and pride, retaliate by accusing 
them of wanting to deracialize themselves, and also by 
opposing their attempted leadership. 

It is among the members of this class that most 
deep-seated and vehement objection is made to the 
application of the name "Negro." And as applied to 
many of them, this term is, strictly speaking, a mis- 
nomer. Not a few are by blood and appearance more 
white than Negro. For that matter, between a third 
and a half of the Negroes in Boston have an admixture 
of white blood ; but in the case of the upper class now in 
question, refinement and association with white people 
combine with their Caucasian strain to make them 
feel that they are not wholly of the one race. To this 
element, as their life is lived to-day, the " tragedy of 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 183 

color" is an ever-present one of heart and soul. And a 
great part, if not indeed the greater part, of the 
tragedy lies in the fact that this is a class which has 
not yet found itself. " When you write of the Negroes 
in Boston," one of them appealed, " tell about us who 
are neither Negroes nor whites, but an ambiguous 
something-between; — a people not yet known or 
named. While our sympathies tend to unite us with the 
Negroes and their destiny, all our aspirations lead us 
toward the whites." The intense insistence upon equal 
rights, and the relentless opposition to Washington's 
advocacy of giving first place to economic progress, 
emanate from — though they are not confined to — 
this class. That such is the case sheds light on the 
psychology of the agitation for equality, and suggests 
that it is animated not solely by reasoned conviction as 
to abstract principles, but also, in many instances, by 
unreasoned and very personal emotions. 

The divergence between the so-called upper class 
and the rest of the Negroes means that the Negro com- 
munity is subject at once to two tendencies which, at 
least on the surface, are mutually antagonistic. The 
one is a conscious and extremely sensitive effort to get 
away from racial lines, and indeed from the very fact of 
race. The other is an instinctive and largely uncon- 
scious adhesion to racial lines, and seeking after race 
coherence. Here are two points of view which are cer- 
tainly, to some extent, opposed; two inner impulses 
which are, in some degree, set over against each other. 
The Negroes who hold to the non-racial attitude are 
able, by reason of their superiorities of education and 
position, to exert an influence out of proportion to their 



184 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

meager numbers. Friction, dissidence, and counter- 
action thereby result. The natural process of social 
integration is continually interfered with by cross- 
currents of disintegration. A similar hampering effect, 
though only in comparatively small measure, is in- 
volved in the emergence of the other horizontal social 
lines to which attention has been called. For the very 
reason that the Negroes are engaged in a severe eco- 
nomic-social struggle upward, class distinctions have 
an abnormal importance in their minds. They guard 
jealously anything which seems to set them even in 
slight degree above their fellows. They can draw dis- 
tinctions, moreover, with a nicety that would do credit 
to the most punctilious arbiter of the most exclusive 
social circles. Persons of the other race who have at- 
tempted, for one purpose or another, to assemble or 
combine the Negroes of a given neighborhood, without 
knowledge or in disregard of their own inner class 
differences, have speedily found trouble on their 
hands. This condition of things detracts, of course, 
from the solidarity of the Negro community, and in so 
far retards its advance. 

Nevertheless, the formation of the foregoing social 
classes, each of which is constantly increasing in dis- 
tinctness, is an integral and inevitable part of the proc- 
ess of differentiation which accompanies, and which 
indeed is, in itself, an essential element of social prog- 
ress. Especially does the evolution of the middle and 
upper classes signalize a growth in material means, 
education, and refinement, which are assets of indis- 
pensable advantage to the Negro community as a 
whole. The Negro society has become more complex, 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 185 

but at the same time more finely inter-constructed 
and resourceful. Its underlying, as distinguished from 
its superficial, power of unity has thus in fact not been 
impaired, but enhanced. Even in the case of the non- 
conformist position of the upper class, the net and 
legitimate effect thereof may, in the light of more ample 
understanding of the situation, prove to be not that of 
disturbance and disruption, but, on the contrary, that 
of requisite balance and counterpoise. 

Section 3. The Actual Advance 

When now, turning from the examination of the 
Negro community in its dissected parts, so to speak, 
account is taken of the positive advances and achieve- 
ments of this community viewed in its entirety, the 
social progress which the Negroes are making in spite 
of all obstacles becomes clearly evident. 

The free public school system is one of the chief per- 
manent and fundamental factors in this progress. 
Ever since the Negroes succeeded in erasing the color 
line in public education, they have had unrestricted 
access to the Boston schools, which are among the very 
best in the country; and they are deriving from them 
benefits identical in kind with those derived by other 
elements of the population. Some of the better quality 
of immigrants from the South come to Boston espe- 
cially to take advantage of the superior opportunities 
for the education of their children.^ School attendance 

' A typical instance is that of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Jackson. 
Here is Mr. Jackson's own statement: — 

"I, John T. Jackson, tailor, of Athens, Georgia, came to Boston, 
Massachusetts, in the year of 1897, for the purpose of educating my 



186 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

between the ages of seven and fourteen is compulsory. 
Though a large proportion of Negro children are taken 
out of school to go to work at the minimum legal age, 
before finishing the grammar course, the great majority 
of them complete the course. As white children in the 
proportion of four out of five do not go beyond gram- 
mar school, the Negroes who grow up in Boston thus 
have an opportunity of common school training at 
least equal to that of the rank and file of the whites. 
On account of the special economic stress under which 
the Negroes live, the proportion of Negro boys and 
girls who go through high school is, of course, far 
smaller than the corresponding proportion of white 
boys and girls; but nevertheless in the total the former 
constitute a substantial number. A great many young 



children. In November, 1899, my wife and six children joined me, 
and since then there have been four additions to the family. 

"The oldest, Mabel S. Jackson, was graduated from West Gram- 
mar School in the class of '01, Maiden High School, '05, and Boston 
University, College of Liberal Arts (A.B.) '09. Now she is in her third 
year as teacher in the Academic Department of the State Normal 
School, Elizabeth City, North Carolina. 

"John T., Jr., left grammar school after completing eight grades 
and entered into the business profession in Lowell, Massachusetts. 

"Ella J. was graduated from Faulkner Grammar School, '05, 
High School, '09, Maiden Commercial School, '10, and is now a 
teacher at Durham, North Carolina. 

"Sallie H. was graduated from Faulkner Grammar School, '06, 
High School, '10, and is now preparing to enter Pratt University in 
New York. 

"Lucy D. was graduated from Faulkner Grammar School, '06, 
High School, '10, and is now a stenographer at Maiden, Massachu- 
setts. 

" Althea I. was graduated from the Maplewood Grammar School, 
'11. 

"Louie R., fifth grade Faulkner Grammar School. 

" Cecile H., third grade Faulkner Grammar School, 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 187 

Negroes, whom the necessity of working prevents 
from going to school in the daytime, attend the even- 
ing grammar and high schools. In these evening 
classes are enrolled, too, many adult Negroes of all 
ages, even old men and women, all eagerly taking 
advantage of the instruction offered, from learning to 
read and write up to mastering higher mathematics, 
A few Negroes profit by the special opportunities held 
out by the Young Men's Christian Association,^ the 
Young Men's Christian Union, the Wells Memorial, 
the Prospect Union in Cambridge, and other similar 
institutions. A very few carry their education into 
colleges, and into normal, technical, and professional 
schools. 

Principals and teachers as a rule report that Negro 
children are not noticeably below the level of the others 
in alertness, application, deportment, and neatness. 
Cases of Negro pupils, who in competition with their 
white school-fellows receive distinguished recognition, 
are of frequent occurrence. In 1911, a Negro girl was 
valedictorian of her class at the Brighton High School. ^ 
By making an average of 95 in her four years' course, 
she also won a place near the head of the 1291 pupils 
who received diplomas from the Boston high schools 
that year. The year before, another girl of the same 
race stood third in her class in one of the Boston gram- 
mar schools, won first place in a competition in verse- 
writing, and was elected class prophet and poet. In a 
grammar school in Cambridge, two Negro boys ranked 

* The central Association at Boston has about seventy-five Negro 
members, and nearly all the suburban branches include some of this 
race. 

2 Miss F. Marion Reed. 



188 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

high in scholarship, and one of them was adjudged 
second in a speaking contest, with a declamation on 
the character and mission of Charles Sumner, the 
Abolitionist. In another school of the same grade in 
Boston, a Negro boy was elected class president and 
captain of the football, baseball, and relay teams. 

Such competitive achievements not only give the 
Negroes themselves confidence in their own capacity, 
but make upon the white boys and girls, and upon 
their parents and the community, a lasting impression 
of the Negro's latent capabilities. 

The relation of the Negroes to the Boston schools is, 
moreover, not confined to receiving benefits. They 
also have a part in the direction of these schools, 
through a number of teachers and other school offi- 
cers.^ The fact that all of the Negro teachers are 
graduates of the Boston Normal School shows strik- 
ingly how members of the race are repaying the com- 
munity, with ample interest, for the opportunities 
it provides. In Cambridge, Miss Maria L. Baldwin, 
who was born and educated in that suburb, has for 
twenty-three years been principal of the Agassiz 
Grammar School, in which she had previously served as 
a teacher. Her position is the more remarkable in that 
there are no other teachers of her race, and only a few 
Negro children, in the school. But by sheer ability, 
combined with a high degree of tact. Miss Baldwin has 
not only performed her exacting duties satisfactorily, 

* The teachers are Misses Harriet L. Smith (daughter of John J. 
Smith, already mentioned in connection with anti-slavery events 
and as a leader among his people), Eleanora A. Smith, Blanche V. 
Smith, Mary E. Smith, Jacqueline Carroll and lola D. Yates, in Bos- 
ton proper; and Miss Gertrude M. Baker, in Cambridge. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 189 

but has commanded the respect and ready support of 
all who know her. Dr. Samuel E. Courtney served on 
the Boston School Board for several years in the latter 
nineties, and more recently James A. Lew, a de- 
scendant of the family of that name which, as previ- 
ously mentioned, rendered valiant service in the 
Revolution, was a member of the School Committee of 
Cambridge. W. Clarence Matthews, of the class of 
1905 of Harvard College, and one of the brilliant base- 
ball stars in the annals of that seat of learning, is an 
assistant athletic director in the Boston schools. 

In Boston all public institutions, not only libraries 
and museums, but hospitals, homes, baths, parks, 
playgrounds, and the rest, are in law as fully accessible 
to the Negroes as to any other element of the citizen- 
ship. Undoubtedly, owing to the prevailing attitude 
toward this race, which has already been described at 
* some length, more or less discrimination enters into the 
actual administration of these institutions. But such 
prejudice is shown only by individuals, has nowhere 
received even tacit official sanction, and has not at- 
tained formidable proportions. And in nearly all the 
places of whatever sort which are open to the public, 
Negroes may be found among those who are profiting 
by the facilities afforded. 

Not only through the schools, which in the main 
afl'ect only the rising generation, are the Negroes edu- 
cating themselves. Young and old, men and women, 
are also pushing forward earnestly along all the differ- 
ent avenues of self-development. Almost never has 
the writer been to the Public Library without seeing at 
least one Negro — and usually several — intently 



190 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

reading or industriously taking notes. In the Art 
Museum he has seen them studying the paintings, at 
concerts listening to the music with unfeigned enjoy- 
ment, and at lectures of all kinds and in all places; — 
living witnesses to the multiplicity and diversity of the 
outreachings of the Negro mind. The contribution 
thus made by such institutions to the progress of the 
Negro people is very great. 

Of semi-public institutions not specifically devoted 
to work for Negroes, such as settlements, clubs and 
classes of a social service nature, homes supported by 
private contributions, and the like, there are many 
which make it a hard-and-fast rule to have nothing to 
do with this element of the population. The majority 
avoid accepting Negroes or extending their work 
among them, so far as they can do this without openly 
drawing the color line. Nevertheless, not a few Ne- 
groes slip through the loophole between what the 
oflBcers of these places would like to do if they dared, 
and what they feel they have to put up with to 
escape criticism on account of too overt discrimina- 
tion. 

Five institutions, however, to the writer's knowledge, 
include a considerable number of Negroes in their 
activities. Cambridge Neighborhood House, which 
grew out of a day nursery and kindergarten started 
in 1881 and which is now the principal settlement in 
the University City, is situated in a locality where the 
Negro population has increased rapidly in the last 
decade. Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, one of Boston's fore- 
most philanthropists, who supports this settlement, 
has insisted from the outset that no racial discrimina- 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 191 

tion should be shown, but that all elements of the 
neighborhood should be received with equal welcome.^ 
In consequence, the proportion of Negroes enrolled in 
the various clubs and classes has come to be approxi- 
mately 10 per cent of a total of about 750 (which in- 
cludes thirteen other nationalities) and more are con- 
stantly coming in. In the trade-school department, 
two thirds of the girls are of the Negro race. No separa- 
tion whatever is made, but throughout, Negroes and 
whites, both children and adults, are intermingled. 
Though there has been occasional friction in the past, 
thus far, owing to the genuine determination of those 
in charge not to countenance segregation, and the con- 
stant exercise of tact, this friction has not resulted in 
serious trouble. At present the most pleasant relations 
prevail. The women's club affords a striking example 
of how amicably and effectively it is possible for 
Negroes and whites to work together. About a third 
of its forty-odd members are of the former race. 
Recently a Negro woman served as president, with 
general satisfaction. This club has been the means of 
bringing about some substantial neighborhood asso- 
ciation between families of the two races. Recently the 
secretary of the men's society was a Negro. Two of the 
club leaders are Negroes and one of these has charge 
of a group of white children. 

At Emmanuel Memorial Parish House, a settlement 
connected with the Church of the Ascension, built in 

^ Mrs. Shaw is a member by marriage of the same family from 
which came Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who, as already related, 
met his death in the Civil Wax while leading a charge of his Negro 
troops. 



192 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

1905, and located near the northeast corner of the 
principal Negro district, there are from 50 to 60 Negroes 
in an enrollment of 600; — again a percentage of 10 
per cent. No separation is made, and pleasant rela- 
tions have been maintained. Only at the dances does 
some embarrassment arise, owing to the fact that the 
whites are averse to taking Negroes as partners. In the 
Pleasant Street section, in the lower South End, Mor- 
gan Memorial, a semi-settlement conducted under 
Methodist auspices, has about 300 Negro boys and 
girls among its 1000 children. In the children's church 
and Sunday school, 100 out of a total of 350, and in the 
evening children's church 125 out of 400, are Negroes. 
Here, too, the Negroes and their white associates of 
many races have got on pleasantly. In Hope Chapel, a 
mission situated near the Morgan Memorial and con- 
ducted by the Old South Congregational Church, the 
entire enrollment is around 800, and the number of 
Negroes about 162. Here, however, Negroes and 
whites are separated except in the kindergarten. At 
Parker Memorial, conducted by Hale House, a social 
settlement, and located near the Dartmouth Street 
Negro section, there are only a few Negroes in the gen- 
eral classes, but the use of the rooms has been granted 
very freely to Negro organizations for lectures, con- 
certs, conventions, lodge meetings, and dances. 

Though in the five institutions which have been 
mentioned, such racial friction as has resulted has not 
been serious, nevertheless the possibility of more seri- 
ous trouble, to some extent the suggestion of it, and to 
a far greater extent the imagination of it, have been 
present as disquieting elements. A determined out- 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 193 

break of latent racial antipathy in any of these institu- 
tions, with the possible exception of Neighborhood 
House, would probably have as an outcome the exclu- 
sion of the Negroes. The policy of receiving Negroes 
into the same building with whites, but grouping them 
separately, as in the case of Hope Chapel just men- 
tioned, represents a transition stage between inter- 
mingling Negroes with whites, on the one hand, and 
completely segregating them in distinct institutions, 
on the other. The segregation plan, however, is very 
plainly the one which is gaining favor in Boston, not 
necessarily to the abandonment of the others, but to 
their comparative disregard. Some of the most radical 
equal rights agitators among the Negroes see in this 
tendency only the desire of the whites to get their race 
off out of the way. Undeniably this motive enters in. 
But in the main the policy of segregation is based on 
the belief that it is more practicable under actual 
existing conditions, with reference especially to the gen- 
eral backwardness of the Negroes, and the prevailing 
disinclination of the whites to be thrown into close 
association with them. Those who advocate this policy 
believe also that in the long run it is more likely to 
yield results satisfactory to the majority of the 
Negroes themselves, in that, while the dangers of fric- 
tion are avoided, the coherence and self-dependability 
of the Negro community are promoted. 

There is one institution that occupies a position 
between those in which Negroes form but a minor pro- 
portion and those which are set aside for that race 
exclusively. This is the Robert Gould Shaw House, a 
settlement established in 1908, and situated on Ham- 



194 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

mond Street, in the heart of the principal Negro center. 
It is an outgrowth of work which had been carried on 
for several years by the South End House. Miss 
Augusta P. Eaton, who had been in charge of that 
work, was put at the head of the new settlement, which 
was founded with the particular moral support of the 
Episcopal Diocese, though no religious services were 
held and the financial support was to be derived from 
general contributions. The managing board includes 
several leading Negroes.^ There are twenty-six white 
and twenty-seven Negro workers, most of whom are 
unpaid. All the opportunities provided are open to 
children and adults of both races. In the summer-time 
outdoor classes and picnics, for the little ones, are a 
considerable number of white children. But the great 
majority of those who take advantage of the institu- 
tion are Negroes. 

The activities carried on are many. There is a 
kindergarten group of 25 or more. For women, there 
are classes in cooking, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, 
embroidery, and basketry, containing altogether about 
fifty members, and a mother's club of more than that 
number, which has weekly meetings of a social and civic 
nature, with lectures on hygiene, the care of children, 
and similar topics. For girls, there are 3 classes in 
cooking, 3 in sewing, 2 in embroidery, a group called 
"Little Housekeepers," and classes in basketry, brass- 
work, clay modeling, dancing and folk-dancing, with a 
membership, inclusive, of about IGO. There are also an 
orchestra and several clubs composed of girls. For 

' Among them Miss Baldwin, the school principal previously 
mentioned. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 195 

boys, there are classes in brass, bent iron, clay model- 
ing, wood-burning, chair-caning, rug-weaving, gym- 
nastics, and singing, with about 100 members; 3 boys' 
clubs; and a troop of Boy Scouts of about 20 members. 
Two clubs of young men, numbering from 75 to 100 
members, are connected with the house. For a time an 
employment bureau was conducted by a Negro woman 
prominent in social service, on an independent business 
basis, and once a week there were social evenings for 
girls in domestic service. Over 300 families are regu- 
larly visited and assisted in various friendly ways. 

After carrying the settlement through its period of 
infancy, the original director was compelled by con- 
siderations of health to resign, and was succeeded in 
the autumn of 1910 by Miss Isabel Eaton, formerly of 
the College Settlement, New York, and Hull House, in 
Chicago, who is the present head worker. The latter 
defines the position of the Robert Gould Shaw House 
thus: "It is a neighborhood house located in a section 
largely settled by colored people, and therefore it con- 
cerns itself chiefly with the activities desired by the 
people who are its chief constituents. It stands for 
justice and equal opportunity for all, irrespective of 
race, color, or other arbitrary distinctions, for the re- 
moval of civil, political, and industrial disabilities and 
the promotion of a just and amicable relation between 
the white and colored people." Certainly not only is a 
work of great value to that section and to the whole city 
being carried on at present, but a broad and strong 
foundation for further development and greatly en- 
larged usefulness is being laid. 

Of the social betterment institutions devoted solely 



196 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

to the Negroes, two are homes for the sick and aged. 
St. Monica's Home, founded in 1888 and occupying a 
house in the Roxbury district in which Garrison at one 
time Hved, cares for sixty or seventy sick Negro women 
and children every year. It is conducted under the 
auspices of the St. Margaret Sisters, an Episcopalian 
order, and is fostered particularly by Trinity Church. 
Two groups of Negro women, the Relief Association 
and the Sewing Circle, contribute toward its support, 
as do also Negro churches and societies and not a few 
individuals of that race. The Home for Aged Colored 
Women, located on Hancock Street in the West End, 
has about twenty inmates and gives some assistance 
outside. Here also the Negro people help somewhat in 
the institution's maintenance. 

In November, 1908, the Mission Priests of St, John 
the Evangelist ^ completed the erection of a large 
building called St. Augustine's and St. Martin's Mis- 
sion, which is situated on Lenox Street, in the principal 
Negro district and which is designed for the double 
use of a church and a center for social service. Clubs 
and classes for both sexes, children and adults, includ- 
ing about 200 persons, are conducted, and a pro- 
gramme of physical, moral, domestic, and manual 
training is carried out.^ In connection with this mis- 
sion there is a farm of 130 acres at Foxboro, not far 

1 This is an English Church order which has been carrying on 
religious proselytizing among the Negroes in Boston for twenty-five 
years or more, under the direction mainly of the now venerable 
Father Field. 

^ Prior to 1908, social service activities of a character similar to 
the present ones, but on a smaller scale, had been carried on at the 
old St. Augustine's Mission in the West End, and in a branch on 
Bradford Street, in the Lower South End. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 197 

from Boston, where young Negro girls are taken for a 
vacation in summer and where a number of them are 
cared for all the year through, instructed in housekeep- 
ing, and later assisted in obtaining positions as 
domestics. 

Several years ago the Roman Catholics rented a 
hall, where work for Negroes, of the same general kind 
as that carried on by the Mission Priests, has been 
started. 

All these outside agencies are assisting vitally in the 
Negro's progress. They represent the good-will and the 
helping hand of the other race. But even more impor- 
tant than their activity is the collective endeavor which 
is going on within the Negro community itself, and 
which, with the general conditions to which attention 
has already been called as a background, may now 
be presented. 

Note has previously been taken of the deficiency of 
this race in the ability for social cooperation of the most 
fundamental sort. But, on the other hand, it must be 
said that in at least such sociability as makes immediate 
appeal to the ear and to the eye, and in such spontane- 
ous association as springs from this outflow of the feel- 
ing of fellowship, the Negroes easily excel the whites. 
Any but the most obstinate attack of melancholy 
would be cured by a saunter through one of the city's 
Negro districts.^ The people accost one another as 
they pass with hearty banter. On every side vociferous 
groups are loitering. Women are exchanging gossip 
from neighboring windows. The barber-shops and 

1 Along Shawmut Avenue above Northampton Street, for in- 
stance, or through Dartmouth Street and up Columbus Avenue. 



198 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

pool-rooms are loafing-places for noisy gatherings of 
men. Bright-eyed children, of ripe-olive skin, romp and 
play with charming abandon and absence of self- 
consciousness. If perchance some have hands and faces 
besoiled, their complexions happily obscure the fact. 
Depression and taciturnity, so evident in the Ghetto, 
for instance, are here found hardly at all. But still 
rarer are disagreeable hurry and overexertion. 

The Negroes are instinctively companionable folk, 
with whom all the ordinary relations of life are free and 
easy. They are no seekers after solitude. They love 
laughter and noise. They are warm-hearted, and 
search their souls for language to convey their emo- 
tions. Their appearance harmonizes with their nature. 
Their features are soft, rounded, ample. Often their 
skins have a bronze richness of hue that might well 
make a "pale-face" envious. Their eyes and teeth 
gleam lustrously from their dark setting. Their voices 
are melodious. Their manners are of the comfortable 
sort, and they are naturally courteous. Travellers who 
have penetrated into Africa say that, on emerging 
from a long sojourn among the natives, they have been 
shocked by the first returning sight of the sharper, 
harder features of the white race, and the initial con- 
tact with their brusquer ways. The American Negroes 
invite a similar comparison with their Caucasian fel- 
low-countrymen. They are irresistibly likable. They 
have, too, an innate drollery of speech, look, and de- 
meanor, and an infectious humor, which are all their 
own. They cannot help feeling good, and one cannot 
help feeling good with them. 

Their passion for sociability finds expression in no 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 199 

end of visiting. Distance and car-fares cannot keep 
them apart. They are incessantly going to parties, 
concerts, dances, and all kinds of jollifications. Ac- 
counts and announcements of these festive gatherings, 
which in pretentiousness ascend from small home 
affairs to full-dress or masquerade balls, crowd the 
columns of the two Negro newspapers. Nor do such 
occasional gatherings satisfy the members of this race. 
They eagerly promote consecutive, continuous asso- 
ciation. No racial type has a stronger craving to 
"belong." They have clubs and societies without 
number and of every description. They eagerly seize 
upon the slightest warrant for banding together, with 
a name, officers, and numerous committees. It does 
not take the observer long to discover that with the 
majority of these organizations the actual if not the 
professed object, as well as the chief result accom- 
plished, is the furtherance of a general good time. 
Many societies, as, for instance, the "Fleur-de-lis," 
"Longworth," " Waverley Outing," and "Blue Rib- 
bon" clubs, make no claim whatever to soberer ends. 
The innate sociability and associativeness of the 
Negro people give them a great advantage, at the very 
start, in the developing of that far deeper and more 
durable kind of cooperation which is essential to social 
advance. The various societies of lighter vein have, 
moreover, an underlying value greater than might at 
first thought appear. They are primary schools, so to 
speak, where thousands of Negroes, nearly all of the 
rising generation, are being educated in the rudiments 
of combination, which elsewhere they may turn to 
sterner account. But of more immediate importance 



200 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

are a great many organizations of serious purpose, some 
of them of an artistic and literary nature, and others of 
a more specifically cooperative and benevolent char- 
acter, which are already at work. 

With reference to the former, many people believe 
that, as the Negroes advance, they are going to con- 
tribute to the composite life of the nation much of dis- 
tinct value in music and the various fields of art. 
There can be no doubt that the Negroes are by nature 
musical. They love to hear music and to make music, 
have a strong sense of rhythm and a marked capacity 
for rudimentary melody. When a large group of them 
sing in unison, the rhythmical and emotional vehe- 
mence of their singing is compelling. Generally, too, 
their voices are soft and pleasant to the ear. But 
finished musical performances are rare among them, 
and wretched ones are common. The fundamental 
explanation of this fact is that the great majority of the 
race are still deficient in the qualities of fine perception 
and unflagging application which are essential to musi- 
cal excellence. In addition, comparatively few have the 
material means to provide themselves with a sufficiently 
long and thorough course of instruction in this depart- 
ment. However, the number of Negroes who are pos- 
sessed of musical ability of a grade to entitle them to 
creditable recognition, even when measured by the 
standards of the community at large, is constantly 
increasing, and the frequent musical honors won by 
Negro children in the public schools is evidence that 
some measure of substantial education along this line i? 
being acquired.^ 

1 In 1910, for example, a Negro girl acted as pianist for the Lynn 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 201 

Of musical organizations, there are many which'are 
undoubtedly sowing good seed for future harvests, but 
only a few whose present accomplishments are note- 
worthy.^ The most ambitious musical undertaking 
in which the Negroes have engaged has been the pres- 
entation of grand opera. The initiative, inspiration, 
and persistence in this undertaking were supplied 
chiefly by Theodore Drury, who had previously, from 
1900 to 1906, presented a series of operas in New York 
City, with a Negro company which he organized. 
Then he came to Boston, and working against disheart- 
ening inertia, he contrived to prepare for the same pur- 
pose a group of about fifty men and women, few of 
whom had trained voices, and most of whom had little 
time to spare from their day's work. In 1907, the opera 
"Aida" and a scene from "Carmen" were given. The 
next year "Faust" was presented, and the year after 
that, "Cavalleria Rusticana," In these presentations, 
a creditable proportion of the principals carried out 
their singing parts well, and a few showed dramatic 
ability. 

In painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts there 
are hardly any of this race in Boston who have done 

High School in her senior year, and composed the music for the 
class hymn. In a Boston grammar school, a Negro boy was selected 
to play the graduation march. The same honor fell to another girl 
in a Cambridge school; and still another was the only soloist out of a 
class of a hundred in the graduation exercises of a school in Win- 
chester. 

^ These latter are Wolff's, Matthews', White's, and Portuondo's 
orchestras, and Ransom's Choral Union. This chorus, organized by 
Mr. John Ransom, a Negro music teacher, and numbering about 
fifty voices, gives many good concerts in the Negro churches and 
societies. 



202 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

superior work, though a Negro of Boston birth is said 
to be winning success as a painter in Paris. ^ There is, 
however, an interesting and worthy organization in 
this field — the Boston Negro Art Club, formed in 
1907, The fact that its ofiicers are waiters and 
kitchen-workers shows against what odds the Negroes 
are striving for some of the finer things. This club gave 
its first exhibition, consisting of one hundred and 
twenty paintings and drawings, in the autumn of 1907, 
and has had other exhibitions since. All the work has 
shown promising endeavor and some has indicated real 
capacity. 

With regard to acting, while little local talent has yet 
attained recognition, there is much which is latent. In 
an entertainment at the South End House, for instance, 
two Negro boys of the neighborhood gave an imitation 
of Chinese laundrymen engaged in an argument. It 
was altogether their own concoction, and, besides being 
side-splitting, was amazingly true to life. Not a few 
Boston Negroes are scattered here and there through- 
out the country as vaudeville performers or members 
of troupes. For drolly humorous, and withal intensely 
human, portrayals, the Negroes undoubtedly display 
a special faculty, probably because this is for them 
only slightly modified self-expression.^ 

In the domain of oratory, the Negroes easily excel 

^ Robert Heraings. 

^ As a comic actor, no one on the American stage surpasses Bert 
Williams. Whenever he and liis partner Walker, or Ernest Hogan, 
or Cole and Johnson, have come to Boston, they have packed the 
theater with crowds in which the color line has been forgotten in the 
fellowship of laughter. The recent deaths of Walker, Ilogan, and 
Cole are a distinct loss to the forces of good cheer. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 203 

their Caucasian fellow-countrymen. If a hundred 
Negroes and a hundred whites were to be taken at 
random, it is safe to say that the former would yield 
at least twice as many stirring speakers as the latter. 
The presence of Negroes on school and college debating 
teams, and among the prize-winners in declamatory 
contests, is not infrequent.^ When infused with close 
reasoning and clothed with the impregnable armor of 
facts, this inborn eloquence of the Negro will prove 
a powerful instrument to his advantage. 

Boston abounds with Negro literary societies. The 
majority are small, the most competent of this class 
being the Booklovers and the Menticulturists. Half a 
dozen are larger, and the two that stand out most prom- 
inently in point of size and importance are the 
Boston Literary and Historical Society and the St. 
Mark Musical and Literary Union. The Boston 
Literary was organized in 1901. It inclines somewhat 
toward the equal rights point of view.^ It meets alter- 
nate Monday evenings at one of the Negro churches. 
The St. Mark Union, which is controlled by a younger 
element and inclines rather toward the Washington 
attitude, had its inception in 1902. Its meetings are 
held every Sunday afternoon in the St. Mark Con- 
gregational Church. At the sessions of these societies 
the usual attendance, drawn not only from the imme- 

^ Roscoe Conkling Bruce, who was elected orator of the class of 
1902, was one of the most eloquent debaters Harvard ever had. 
For many years there has been no more moving pubUc speaker in 
Boston than the Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom, recently pastor of the 
Charles Street African Methodist Church. 

^ As is implied by the fact that among its presidents have been 
Messrs. Grimke, Wilson, and Trotter, to whom previous reference 
has been made in connection with equal rights agitation. 



204 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

diate district, but from the whole Greater Boston area, 
is from two hundred to two hundred and fifty, but not 
infrequently the Literary attracts three times that 
number, and the Union would get as many, provided 
only it had the necessary seating capacity. The pro- 
grammes are strong, consisting of addresses by locally 
well-known men and women of both races. More 
noteworthy than the prepared talks, however, is the 
extemporaneous speaking from the floor, in which the 
Negroes exhibit a mental grasp and ability in debate 
calculated to surprise uninformed white visitors. In- 
deed, hardly any more persuasive argument in the 
Negro's favor can be brought to bear on skeptics than 
the lasting impression, which they cannot help carrying 
away from one of these meetings, of the courtesy and 
cordiality, the tasteful dress, the close and intelligent 
attentiveness of the audience, and the efficient manage- 
ment of the programme on the part of the presiding 
officers. 

One member of Boston's Negro community has 
achieved literary distinction of a high rank. This is 
William Stanley Braithwaite, who is generally reck- 
oned, since Paul Lawrence Dunbar's death, the lead- 
ing poet of his race; though, unlike Dunbar, his poetry 
has practically no direct reference to the life of the 
Negro people. Braithwaite has also risen to be one of 
the accredited younger literary men of America to-day. 
There now stand to his account two volumes of col- 
lected lyric poems, as well as many still scattered 
verses, of his own composition, and a scholarly series 
of four English anthologies. It is as a literary critic, 
however, distinguished in unusual degree by the quali- 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 205 

ties of sympathetic insight, broad comprehension, 
and choiceness of style, that he is attracting most 
notice.^ 

^ The following brief biographical statement was supplied by 
Mr. Braithwaite at the writer's request: — 

"My paternal grandfather, John Braithwaite, was a man of dis- 
tinction and influence in Demerara, British Guiana, the proprietor 
and editor of a newspaper, through which he advocated, and won 
for the colony, the establishment of a Local Assembly from the Eng- 
lish Colonial Office. His eldest son, my father, William Smith 
Braithwaite, was educated at Queen's College, his native place, after- 
wards studying medicine in London, England. He came to America 
in the early eighteen -seventies, settling in Boston, where he married 
Emma De Wolfe, who was born in North Carolina, but whose life 
has been spent in Boston since she was six years old. My father was 
a man of remarkable intellectual ability; of a sensitive, haughty, 
and highly nervous temperament, but who apparently lacked the 
will to concentrate his energies in a determined purpose to achieve 
success in some one particular vocation. Consequently his life was 
one of erratic talent, distilled through a lovable personality which 
drew men under its influence, directing and shaping their energies, 
but achieving nothing substantial toward its own development and 
acquirement. 

"I was the second child and eldest son of these parents, born at 
Boston, December 6, 1878. At my father's death in 1886, he left his 
widow the asset of a brilliant but ineffectual memory, and the Ua- 
bility of some domestic indebtedness and a family of four children to 
maintain and rear. I remained at school until the middle of my 
twelfth year, when an overwhelming sense of duty sent me into the 
world to assist my mother in her struggle to provide for the family. 
I have not been back to school since. My effort to earn wages placed 
me in various occupations such as a competent youth might pursue 
(also in many against which my pride and competency rebelled), 
and such as a colored youth had some difficulty in obtaining. At 
fifteen, like a revelation, there broke out in me a great passion for 
poetry, an intense love for literature, and a yearning for that ideal life 
which fosters the creation of things that come out of dreams and 
visions and symbols. I dedicated my future to literature, though the 
altar upon which I was to lay my sacrificial life seemed beyond all 
likelihood of opportunity and strength and equipment to reach, I 
set about it, however, with a fortitude, hope, and patience, which now 
seem to me most amazing in one whose chance was one against a thou- 



206 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

A promising writer of verse is George Reginald Mar- 
getson, of Cambridge, who recently had published a 
volume entitled "Songs of Life." For the most part 
his compositions, too, contain little of racial character, 
but occasionally, as in the stanzas entitled "Ethiopia's 
Flight," he attacks the Negro question with striking 
boldness and directness.^ 

sand in surviving the ruthless obstacles which attend even the most 
favorable literary career, and succeeded in haA'ing recognized the 
quality of my efforts, which were attained through a sheer deter- 
mined personal cultivation. I am the more satisfied in all this, since 
I never made a special appeal either in my work or my person; I 
neither expressed nor interpreted racial characteristics, but always 
attempted to speak the universal language of human nature; and if I 
ever carry any distinction to the grave, it will be in proving that art, 
and especially art as it has developed and been perfected under the 
influence of American civilization, with all its peculiar paradoxes, 
knows no distinction of race. 

"My first book. Lyrics of Life and Love, was published in 1904. It 
won for me the immediate recognition of the critics, the personal 
friendship of eminent literary persons, and introduced me to a 
market for my other literary wares. Practical difficulties were not 
banished, but this book gave me the power of, and hope in, battling 
them, and I am now doing so with increasing success. My other 
books are: The Book of Elizabethan Verse, 1900; The House of Falling 
Leaves, 1908; The Book of Georgian Verse, 1908; The Book of Restora- 
tion Verse, 1909; The Book of Victorian Verse, 1910. I have con- 
tributed a large number of uncollected critical essays to various 
publications, and am the literary correspondent of the Los Angeles 
Times. 

"My personal experience with color prejudice has been slight, 
hardly recognizable in my career as a whole; I encountered it once in 
seeking a dwelling-place. As an author it has never touched my life 
— certainly not in any concrete or personal experience. And I 
venture to say that my dealings with publishers and editors have been 
without a thought of it." 

^ It is from Ethiopia's Flight that the lines quoted at the end 
of the closing chapter of this volume are taken. Those two lines 
impress the writer as prophetically encompassing the Negro's whole 
past and future in the American nation. The immediate context, of 
which they form the conclusion, is as follows : — 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 207 

The Negro organizations which are more specifically 
concerned with activities of a benevolent and ameliora- 
tive nature show in a still more direct way the social 
progress which the Negroes are making. As might be 
presumed, the advance in this respect has barely begun 
to take form in institutions of the larger importance 
implied by possession of a domicile and a generally 
recognized place in the community scheme. The two 
nearest approximations thereto are the Young Men's 
Educational Aid Association and the Harriet Tubman 
W.C.T.U. Home; the work of both of which, however, 
is of very modest proportions. But short of such an 
institutional development there are a good many 
Negro organizations which have more or less of a 
social service character. 

Of these the most important from a numerical point 
of view are the various lodges of secret and semi-secret 
fraternities, of national ramification, which have mu- 
tual aid features. These Negro orders have no official 

"America, O mighty government! 
Thou matchless star in Earth's vast firmament! 
Beneath thy banners in thy heaven-kissed land, 
Ethiopia stretches forth to thee her hand. 

"Extend to her the aid her cause requires. 
Incline her way to where kind Hope inspires. 



"She seeks no claim but what is hers by right, 
The same as thou dost give unto the white. 

"For thy care were both by Nature lent, 
And both alike should feel thy moral bent. 
Both formed thy bulwark since thy life began, 
And both together still must work thy plan." 

Margetson's method of composition is interesting. He works as a 
stationary engineer and composes most of his verses in the midst of 
his daily tasks, often singing them, and seldom committing them to 
paper till he is fully satisfied with them. 



208 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

connection with any of the corresponding ones among 
the other race. There are six lodges of Odd Fellows in 
Greater Boston, with a membership of about 600. Two 
of those in the city proper own, subject to a small 
mortgage, a hall which has been assessed at $25,000, 
and several of those in Cambridge hold joint title to a 
building valued at $7000. The six together have in 
their treasuries funds amounting to $20,000 or more. 
The auxiliary women's order has four lodges, with a 
membership of about 500.^ The Masons also have six 
lodges, with a membership of approximately 450; 
which, with the customary higher-degree organizations 
drawn from them, have on hand savings close to 
$15,000. The rapidity with which this fund has grown 
in recent years is shown by the fact that, whereas a 
decade ago one lodge had next to nothing in its 
treasury, to-day it has about $4000. ^ The National 
Grand United Order of Brothers and Sisters of Love and 
Charity has six lodges, with a membership of about 
600. There are seven or eight small lodges of the Inde- 
pendent Order of St. Luke, with a total membership of 
about 200. In this order, every cent taken in goes to 
the national headquarters at Richmond, while all the 
money dispensed comes from that central source. 
Whenever a member in any part of the country dies, 
all the members are taxed half a penny. There are two 
lodges in Boston, with about 75 members, of the fra- 
ternity known as the True Reformers, which also has 
headquarters at Richmond, and which is one of the 

1 The Household of Ruth. 

* The women's auxiliaries of the Masons are the Heroines of 
Jericho and the Order of the Eastern Star. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 209 

most successful national organizations among the 
Negro people. The Improved Benevolent Order of 
Elks (white Elks please take notice of the word "Im- 
proved"!) have three lodges, with a membership of 
about 250. The Knights of Pythias have four societies. 
The Foresters have a strong association. All these 
organizations, as well as a few other similar ones of 
lesser importance, bestow sick relief ascending from 
$4 to $7 a week for the first six weeks, and from $2.50 
to $5 a week thereafter, and death benefits of from $50 
to $150. In view of the facts that their collective 
membership is approximately 3500, and that a ma- 
jority of the members represent family groups con- 
sisting of several persons, it is evident that, in their 
relief of distress caused by sickness and death, they 
must reach a large percentage of Boston's Negro 
population.^ 

Of the societies which have as their chief object 
social service of broader scope than mutual aid, and 
extending beyond their own membership, the great 
majority are composed of women. The work which 
these local organizations are doing is, moreover, part of 
a large national movement of Negro women for the 
betterment of the conditions of their race, of which 
Boston was the source and is to-day one of the most 
active centers. 

In 1892, the Woman's Era Club was founded in 

Boston by Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, the widow 

of Judge George L. Ruffin, to whom previous reference 

^ There are also many purely local organizations of a combined 
social and beneficial character, such as the Fraternals, the Unity 
Club, the Benevolent Fraternity of Coachmen, the Head and Side 
Waiters' Association, and the Sons of North Carolina. 



210 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

has been made as a man of prominence among his 
people in the period following the war.^ This club, 
which is still in existence, adopted as its stated purpose 
the furtherance of the welfare of the Negro race gen- 
erally and of Negro women in particular. Its meetings 
have been held twice a month, and its membership is 
about 60, including nearly all the leading Negro 
women of Boston and vicinity. Its prestige was recog- 
nized by its being received into both the state and 
national federations of women's clubs of the other 
race. It very soon succeeded in arousing a wide inter- 
est in practical measures of betterment, and in 1895, 
a national convention of Negro women was called to 
assemble in Boston. On August of that year, in the 
Charles Street African Methodist Church, the National 
Federation of Afro-American Women was organized, 
with Mrs. Ruffin as president. In July, 1896, this body 
united with the Washington National League to form 
the present National Association of Colored Women. 
In June, 1896, was launched the New England Federa- 
tion of Women, which within two months outgrew its 
New England bounds and became the Northeastern 
Federation of Women's Clubs, which to-day has a 
membership of over 2000. The Federation has depart- 
ments devoted to work among children, mothers' 
meetings, education, philanthro])y, arts and crafts, 
temperance, the prevention of lynching, and other 
similar matters. It publishes the "Northeastern," a 
quarterly in which the work being carried on in various 
localities is recorded. The National Association has 

^ For reference to Mrs. Ruffin's own part in affairs both before and 
after the war, see Appendix, Article iii. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 211 

similar departments, and both bodies are rapidly 
uniting the Negro women of the country in a correlated 
programme of amelioration. 

In the Greater Boston district, there are to-day 
about twenty women's clubs of a social service nature, 
with a total membership of about 750. The general 
character of their activities is indicated by extracts 
from several typical reports published in the "North- 
eastern." 

The Women's Protective League of Maiden writes : — 

We have been able to place in the bank more money this 
year than in any of the previous years. Twelve new members 
have been installed; we have given ten dollars to Rev. Car- 
rington's church; smaller donations have been given to the 
sick, and we have aided St. Monica's Home. The young 
ladies of the league have opened an industrial department. 

The Cambridge Charity Club reports : — 

The membership has been increased from twenty-five to 
fifty. [Three months later an increase of ninety -six was re- 
corded.l A committee was appointed whose duty it was to 
locate the needy poor and assist them as far as our means 
would allow. Thirty dollars has been expended in this man- 
ner. We have had a flower committee, which has done ex- 
cellent work. We have donated five dollars toward defraying 
expenses for defending the soldiers in the Brownsville affair; 
five dollars toward the ice chest in St. Monica's home, and 
eight dollars toward the educational fund to be used for the 
benefit of Miss Davis. Juvenile Circle No. 1, consisting of 
thirty children, has been organized, and our committee 
hopes to report great success in this new line of work. 

The Sojourner Truth Club of Boston makes this 
statement : — 

We have conducted a very successful class of boys and 
girls in sewing, knitting, and millinery. At Christmas-time, 
we had a very heavily laden tree for our children and dis- 



212 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tributed clothing, material for useful garments, and other 
things. During Old Home Week we worked with the General 
Committee in doing honor to this occasion, and distributed 
two thousand flags and post-cards through the hospitals of 
the city, and in children's homes. 

As the funds of these societies are derived from dues, 
which generally do not exceed twenty-five cents a 
month, and from occasional entertainments, it is 
apparent that the work carried on must of necessity be 
of humble proportions. But the spirit which animates 
it is the simplest, truest, and best; each club is a center 
of good influence and an example inviting emulation, 
and the members are disciples of the gospel of social 
helpfulness. For several years there has been a move- 
ment looking toward the ownership of a building, to 
serve as a common meeting-place for the Negro 
women's clubs of greater Boston and a center for their 
philanthropic and educational activity.^ 

With the Negroes there is a closer approximation to 
equality between the sexes than is yet the case among 
those of the other race. That this is so is, in the writer's 
opinion, due mainly to special economic conditions. 
In the stern struggle for a foothold in which the 
Negroes have been engaged since their emancipation, 
and especially since the recent hardening of public 
sentiment toward them, the women have perforce 
become bread-winners to a very large degree. Thus 
they have made a relatively greater economic contribu- 
tion within their race than have white women in theirs, 

' Among the women at present most actively devoted to this 
work are Miss Eliza Gardner and Mesdames Hannah C. Smith, 
Charlotte E. France, Agnes Adams, Olivia Ward Bush, and Minnie 
T. Wright. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 213 

and so they have attained to a place of relatively 
greater importance in the social order of their own com- 
munity. Negro women manifest a marked independ- 
ence, coupled with a sober realization of the extent to 
which the welfare of the race is in their hands. Negro 
men recognize and respect their position. The women 
take and are given a very important share in race 
affairs. More fully than the men, if anything, they 
exemplify the qualities of patience, hope, and deter- 
mination. The writer has in fact heard many Negro 
men declare that to-day it is the women who are lead- 
ing the race in its struggle for better things. Here is 
surely fertile soil for cultivation by the equal suffra- 
gists : — on the one hand, a special need for the leaven- 
ing and uplifting influence of the suffrage movement; 
and on the other, the certainty of a ready response. 

With regard now to the general results to which the 
various ameliorative factors and activities which have 
already been described have contributed, one of the 
most noticeable of these is the marked development of 
the Negro community in self-support. The substantial 
progress which has been made in this respect is shown 
by the small and constantly decreasing extent to which 
the Negroes fall into the hands of public and private 
charity. According to the National Census, in the 
decade 1870-80, while the Negro population of Massa- 
chusetts increased from 13,947 to 18,697, the Negro 
paupers in state institutions increased only from 73 to 
78; and in the decade 1880-90, while the Negro popu- 
lation increased to 22,144, the number of Negro 
paupers in institutions did not increase at all. The 
Massachusetts Census of 1895 showed that in that 



214 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

year, when the Negroes formed 1.1 per cent of the pop- 
ulation of the state, of the 11,054 paupers in institu- 
tions or cared for by private families, only 164, or 1.5 
per cent, were of this race. In view of the special ad- 
versities under which the Negroes live, this showing 
was remarkably favorable. The extent to which the 
Negroes take care of themselves appears still more 
clearly in the light of a table compiled by the Associ- 
ated Charities of Boston in the early nineties, giving 
causes of poverty, on the basis of 7225 specific indi- 
vidual cases, with reference to the various racial ele- 
ments. Of poverty due to personal misconduct, the 
percentage was lowest in the case of the Negroes; 
whereas with poverty caused by misfortune, the per- 
centage was highest among them; and still higher, 
relatively, as regards the particular misfortunes of 
sickness or death in the family.^ It is a fact that sel- 
dom does one find a Negro begging on the streets. 
The members of this race possess in high degree the 
quality of human kindness, and are ever ready to help 
their fellows in time of need. One outward sign of this 
is had in the numerous socials and entertainments 
which are constantly being given for the benefit of 
some household that has sufi^ered affliction. The in- 
creasing ability of the Negroes to provide for their own 
needs in ways material, goes to counterbalance, in 
some measure, their previously noted dependence on 
the other race, and is, moreover, but one of many evi- 
dences of their growth in general self-reliance. 

One of the central elements of the social progress 
which has already been made, and one of the surest 
* For the table in full, see Appendix, table xv. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 215 

guarantees that this progress will continue, is the 
marked improvement which has been affected in home 
conditions. As will later appear, a constantly increas- 
ing number and proportion of Negroes are acquiring 
the ownership of homes; and a still larger proportion 
are becoming able, though still tenants, to live in a 
comfortable and homelike way. Though these facts 
do not take long in the telling, they signify much. 
Ownership and permanency of residence are, in fact, 
developing the qualities of responsibility and stability 
of character in the individual, and at the same time 
promoting sound conditions in the neighborhood and 
the community. 

All through the social life of the Negro, as overtone 
and undertone, runs the never-ceasing discussion of 
the future destiny of the race. Among white people this 
is one of the questions which arouses much interest; 
but with the Negroes it is the all-absorbing and all- 
dominating theme. Even those who profess a desire to 
minimize and ignore race distinctions, nevertheless, by 
the vehement assertion of their doctrine on the slight- 
est provocation, do as much or more than others to keep 
alive the perpetual query, which will not down. In all 
the talk "about it and about" there is much uncer- 
tainty, much discouragement, and some despair. But 
there is vastly more hope and trust and confidence. 
The conviction has constantly grown upon the writer 
that the Negroes themselves understand their own 
conditions far better, when all is said, than do the 
whites. Their deepening comprehension of these con- 
ditions is accompanied by a growing determination and 
an increasing power successfully to cope with them. 



216 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Every day the will to advance is taking on greater 
strength. 

At the same time the Negro people are becoming 
ever more fully conscious of themselves as a fellowship 
and of their collective potentialities ; and what is most 
significant and promising of all, are acquiring a deeper 
and stronger race consciousness and the rudiments of 
a genuine race pride. The two Negro newspapers, the 
"Guardian" in Boston and the "Advocate" in Cam- 
bridge, are, by their weekly recording of local activities 
among this element of the population, continually 
making the Negroes in the Greater Boston district 
better acquainted with one another and thus binding 
them more closely together as a single community. At 
the same time, by their discussion of public affairs 
which especially concern the race, they, together with 
over two hundred other Negro newspapers and period- 
icals published in the United States, are furthering the 
national unity of the Negro people. The many organ- 
izations of which examples have been cited, with their 
membership drawn from diverse parts of the Boston 
district, are having a similar effect. The most discern- 
ing of the leaders are instilling the "get together" 
spirit. A particularly important factor, moreover, 
which is working to enhance national race conscious- 
ness, is the celebration of events vitally related to the 
Negro's history in America. The birth anniversaries of 
Lincoln, Whittier, and Douglass, the issuing of the 
Emancipation Proclamation, and many other events of 
similar significance, are appropriately commemorated. 
The most important recent celebration was that of the 
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Garrison, to 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 217 

which two entire days, December 10 and 11, 1905, were 
devoted. Thus a groundwork for the eliciting and 
instilling of a real pride of race, which, as has already 
been emphasized, is one of the most indispensable ele- 
ments to the Negro's advance, is being laid; and almost 
unconsciously, such a pride in racial history and attain- 
ment is beginning to take form. This is all that can as 
yet be said, but this much is fundamental and preg- 
nant with possibility. 

The independent advance of the Negroes is both 
accompanied and still further evidenced by their 
increasing participation in the affairs of the com- 
munity at large. For instance, James H. Wolff, a vet- 
eran of the war and a man of prominence among his 
people, was in 1906 elected head of the Massachusetts 
Commandery of the Grand Army of the Republic, in 
which all but a slight proportion of the members are 
white; and in 1910, he was appointed by the mayor to 
deliver the city's official Fourth of July oration.^ Wil- 
liam H. Lewis, to whom there have been several earlier 
allusions, was a charter member of the recently estab- 
lished City Club, and was one of the speakers at the 
great memorial mass meeting held at Symphony Hall 
on the occasion of the death of Julia Ward Howe. 
Probably the most striking example in this connection, 
however, is that of the civic prominence of Theodore 
H. Raymond in Cambridge.^ The latter is one of the 
directors of the local Y.M.C.A., recently served as 

• This appointment was conferred by Mayor John F. Fitzgerald, 
a Democrat. For further reference to Wolff, see Appendix, Arti- 
cle III. 

^ Mr. Raymond is a grandson of the Rev. John T. Raymond of 
Abolition days, for further reference to whom see Appendix, Article ii. 



218 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

chairman of the special committee in charge of the 
erection of a new building, and also acted as treasurer 
of the building fund of the Y.W.C.x\. He is treasurer 
of the Prospect Union, — a sort of people's forum with 
class and club features, — is a leading member of all 
the principal civic organizations, and president of the 
corporation organized last October which publishes the 
only daily paper in that suburb. In short, he is a living 
refutation of the complaint that color prejudice is an 
insuperable obstacle to a Negro's success. He is a 
flesh-and-blood demonstration of the fact that, at any 
rate when ability, attractive personality, refinement, 
and tact are present, the color of a man's skin will not 
and cannot keep him from rising to his proper level. 

These, moreover, are but a few of the most striking 
instances of general influence exercised by persons of 
the Negro race. Cases which approximate to them 
could be multiplied indefinitely. The sum of them all, 
however, is that the Negroes are forging ahead not 
only among themselves, as a people bound together by 
ineradicable racial ties, but also as a determining 
factor, individual and collective, in the whole com- 
munity. 

Nothing could be more unquestionable than that the 
inherent weaknesses, and the adverse past and present 
conditions, which have retarded the Negroes in their 
social advance, must have kei)t them back in their 
ethical progress as well, and have entered with serious 
directness into their everyday standards of morality. 
When it is considered that the ancestors of the Ameri- 
can Negroes of to-day were taken from a state of primi- 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 219 

live savagery, and were then for two and a half cen- 
turies subjected to a condition of slavery which kept 
them in ignorance, treated them as mere beasts of 
burden, disregarded their personal chastity and mari- 
tal allegiance, fostered bestiality, and utterly deprived 
them of all opportunity for independent endeavor and 
achievement; when it is considered also that these con- 
ditions passed away less than fifty years ago, and that 
during the period which has since elapsed the great 
mass of the race have continued in their benighted 
lot; — when these things are taken duly into account, 
it would surely be a miracle, contrary to the natural 
and accustomed workings of the laws of cause and 
effect, if the Negroes of to-day were not morally back- 
ward. Close acquaintance with the facts makes it 
plain beyond a doubt that such a miracle has not taken 
place. To go into any extended citation of figures to 
prove that there is a more pronounced tendency to 
immorality and criminality among the Negroes than 
among the whites would be superfluous. That such 
is the case may be, and indeed must be, presumed. 

According to some recent statistics, 203 out of 6041, 
or 3.3 per cent, of the convicts in Massachusetts were 
Negroes, while members of this race formed but 1.1 per 
cent of the state's inhabitants:^ that is, the proportion 
of Negro convicts was three times the proportion of 
Negroes in the population. In view, however, of the 
past and present forces inimical to the Negro's moral 
welfare, this record of crime is far less unfavorable 
than would be expected, and should not in fact be taken 
as bearing witness to any abnormal criminal propen- 
* Massachusetts Census, 1895. 



220 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

sity. If the Negroes were of an exceptionally criminal 
bent, such an innate procHvity, combined with the 
social and economic adversities with which they have 
had to cope, would make their percentage of convicts 
much more than three times as large as their per- 
centage of the population.^ 

As regards crimes against the person, in general, 
the Negro's inborn good nature acts as a preventive 

^ Most discussions of this subject leave out of account altogether 
the peculiar conditions to which the Negroes have been subject and 
those under which they are living to-day. Many simply enlarge on 
the extent of immorality and criminality among the Negroes without 
making any comparison whatever with the extent of the same evils 
among the whites. Some are nothing more than lurid recitations of 
particular acts of immorality and crime, lacking even the suggestion 
of general proportion. It is very easy by the narration of such par- 
ticular acts or crimes, especially if uncommonly brutal ones are 
selected, to make upon the hearer's imagination an utterly false 
impression. Not only in the case of the Negroes, but in the case of 
any element of the population, would this be an easy thing to accom- 
plish. Indeed, a Negro need only clip from the newspapers, for a 
week or two, the accounts of atrocious crimes committed by indi- 
viduals of the white race, to be able to go among his ignorant brethren 
in the Southern black belt and make them believe the whites to be 
fiends incarnate. When particular acts of immorality and crime 
committed by Negroes are exploited, each one should properly be 
balanced by the citation of similar acts committed by members of 
the white race. When what purport to be general figures of the 
extent of immorality and crime among Negroes are given, these 
figures should be carefully compared with corresponding figures for 
the whites. It will usually prove that the proportion is much less 
excessive among the Negroes than might at first sight seem to be the 
case. And finally, after such a comparison has been made, the con- 
ditions which have retarded the ethical development of the Negroes 
should be given due weight. It will then become evident, as in the 
case of the Massachusetts figures already referred to, that the pro- 
portionate extent of immorality and criminality among the 
Negroes is far less than might be presumed. In other words, the out- 
come of the comparison will be rather to the Negro's credit than to his 
discredit. 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION £21 

influence. His lesser degree of the trait of economic 
acquisitiveness operates to reduce his temptation to 
theft. Neither of these characteristics, however, is 
such as to have any appreciable restraining effect with 
reference to illicit sexual relations, but, on the con- 
trary, especially in the case of the former, tends if 
anything to make such relations easier. And the 
Negro's shortcoming in point of morality in fact shows 
itself most flagrantly in proneness to extreme sexual 
laxity. This is inherently a matter concerning which 
it would be next to impossible to gather statistical data 
at once trustworthy and of any value for purposes of 
comparing conditions among the Negroes with those 
among the whites. But it is a matter with respect to 
which common report, though considerably exagger- 
ated, is nevertheless confirmed in substance by scrupu- 
lous observation. The laxity in question, however, 
does not appear so much in the form of any outright 
sexual viciousness or confirmed depravity, as it does 
simply in that of an innate weakness or failing. The 
impression made upon the observer is not that the 
Negroes, proceeding with at least ordinary apprecia- 
tion of what is right and what is wrong in this respect, 
nevertheless willfully and pervertedly do the wrong; 
but, on the contrary, that with very inchoate and un- 
defined conceptions of sexual rectitude, and mostly as 
the result of ignorance coupled with a deficient power 
of resistance, they simply follow their animal-human 
instincts. This view of the matter is borne out, on the 
one hand, by the rarity among the Negroes of houses of 
prostitution; and on the other, by the comparative 
yieldingness of the common bars to intimacy between 



222 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the sexes, which in itself constitutes a lesser motive for 
the maintenance of such resorts. This lax condition of 
things applies not alone to the unmarried element. 
There is also a want of rigidity within the marital state. 
It is a fact that a considerable number of Negro men 
and women are living together, as husband and wife, 
without legal sanction. In a large proportion of such 
cases, however, the relationship is practically equiva- 
lent to marriage, so far as its permanence and assump- 
tion of family responsibilities are concerned, and the 
individuals are only in minor degree conscious of seri- 
ous transgression on their part. 

Thus it is not out-and-out immorality, but rather 
the want of any positive morality, which characterizes 
the Negro. This lack, showing itself most flagrantly 
in connection with relations between the sexes, where 
the term "moral" has come to be more narrowly ap- 
plied, amounts in its broader manifestation to a gen- 
eral ethical undevelopment. Though after the present 
survey of the Negro's situation on all sides has been 
completed, more will be said with regard to the deep- 
reaching significance of this deficiency, enough has 
already been said to make plain its inter-relation with 
all the Negro's past and present social conditions. 

Out of the social the ethical naturally rises. The 
whole ethical code consists in fact of a definition of the 
mutual relations and common standards which are 
indispensable to a sound social order. If, then, as pre- 
viously stated, the factors which have been adverse 
to the Negro's social well-being have at the same time 
retarded his ethical development, it is, on the other 
hand, equally true that the Negro's social progress 



SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 223 

implies, and must indeed involve, his ethical advance. 
So close is this inter-relation that many of the gains 
which have been described as social might no less 
properly be set down as ethical. Such is particularly 
the case with the inner strengthening of the Negro 
home, the work of neighborhood amelioration under- 
taken by some of the Negro societies, and all efforts 
toward the subordination of personal and factional in- 
terests to organized collective endeavor for the com- 
mon good. Furthermore, in view of what has already 
been stated concerning the betterment which is being 
accomplished in these vital respects, it almost goes 
without saying that the laxity in moral conduct to 
which allusion has been made does not apply indis- 
criminately to the entire Negro population. On the 
contrary, just as gradations have been distinguished 
with reference to economic-social conditions, so like- 
wise may be perceived roughly corresponding ethical 
layers. And in proportion as the whole Negro com- 
munity builds itself up in the one regard, so it must 
surely rise to a higher level in the other. A double, and 
still inherently single, process of social construction 
and ethical growth is now under way. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE UPWARD STRUGGLE OF THE NEGRO CHURCH 

Some of the other humiliated peoples find both a 
source and bulwark of racial coherence and dignity in 
their religion. Such is the case with certain of the 
foreign groups who take up their abode in America. 
The Polish immigrants, for instance, seeking escape 
from oppression in their native land at the hands of 
alien governments, make their immemorial church of 
the Roman Catholic faith the starting-point and center 
of their life in the new world. The almost indispen- 
sable nucleus of every Polish colony in this country 
consists of a priest and a meeting-place for religious 
devotion. Clustering about the church edifice the set- 
tlement gradually extends, till ere long there is need for 
other churches, which in their turn bring still further 
growth. In the course of years there stretches out a 
close-packed, monotonous expanse of humble wooden 
cottages; from among which, however, stand forth 
great stone church-temples, with towers high rising 
toward the heavens, as though indeed to symbolize the 
aspiration and potentialities of the people from whose 
individual mites, collectively amassed, these splendid 
structures are erected. The preeminent example of 
religious unity is, of course, that of the Jews. In their 
synagogues the descendants of Israel find solace for 
their tribulations, strength for their daily encounters, 
and hope and inspiration for the future. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 225 

What might such religious solidarity do for the 
Negro; and in what measure is it, in fact, manifest? 
Is the religious life of the Negro people subject to such 
cross-currents and undertows as those which, it has 
appeared, retard his social progress? If such be the 
case, is a similar centripetal forward movement never- 
theless discernible? Beyond this, and more specifically, 
how far are religious forces and activities being organ- 
ized in practical ways and for practical ends, with ref- 
erence to their strengthening effect in the Negro's 
concrete problems? 

Turning now to these inquiries, it appears that the 
religious life of the Negroes has three avenues of ex- 
pression. The first is through attendance at white 
churches. The second is through missions established 
and supervised by whites, but set aside exclusively for 
Negroes. The third is through their own separate 
churches. 

As has already been noted, the Negroes in Boston 
attended white churches for a long time before they 
had any of their own. In the earliest days, while 
slavery was still in existence, they were restricted to a 
gallery, like the one which may still be seen in the Old 
North Church. After slavery died out, this restriction 
also passed away, and the Negroes sat among the 
whites, generally as servants in the family pews; but to 
some extent, particularly in the case of those following 
independent callings, on a basis of apparent equality.^ 

Then, after one hundred and sixty-eight years, the 
first independent Negro church was founded. Its estab- 

' Phillis Wheatly, for instance, to whom earlier reference has 
been made, was a member of the Old South Meeting-House. 



226 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

lishment was due not primarily to any positive move- 
ment toward a policy of exclusion on the part of the 
whites, but rather to the increase in the number of the 
city's Negro inhabitants and the gradual rise of a 
community of interest among them. Since that time, 
the great majority of this element of the population, 
partly of their own accord and partly because of the 
prevailing attitude of the other race, — of which more 
will presently be said, — have gone to these separate 
churches of their own. 

Nevertheless a considerable minority, for one of 
several reasons, or a combination of them all, attend 
white churches instead. Among these, the group 
which stands out with chief distinctness is composed of 
some of the most uncompromising of those members of 
the race who insist on the importance of equal privi- 
lege, and who profess to be opposed to all racial segre- 
gation. This group has its historical origin in the 
Abolitionist propaganda. Garrison himself advised 
the Negroes against forming separate churches, and 
Frederick Douglass exhorted his people to intermingle 
with the other race in religious activity.^ To-day, most 

^ In 1874, Garrison deprecated the attempt of the Negroes in a 
town near Boston to start a church of their own, as estabhshing "a 
precedent which logically ends in indorsing the old pro-slavery doc- 
trine that there should be no fraternization between the two races 
on account of color." William Lloyd Garrison, vol. iv, p. 239. 

In the same address at Rochester, New York, in 1848, from which 
previous quotation has been made (see chapter iv), Douglass 
said: "I am well aware of the anti-Christian prejudices which have 
excluded many colored persons from white churches, and the conse- 
quent necessity for erecting their own places of worship. This evil I 
would charge upon its originators, and not upon the colored people. 
But such necessity does not exist to the extent of former years. 
There are societies where color is not regarded as a test of membership. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 227 

of the Negroes who adhere to this doctrine in practice 
are members of what has already been designated as 
the upper class, who are generally characterized by a 
considerable strain of Caucasian blood and by lightness 
of complexion. Probably a majority of this class, indeed, 
attend white churches, so far as they go to church at 
all. They contend that in religious worship, surely, 
racial prejudice should not be tolerated, and maintain 
that drawing the color line here has the effect, identical 
with that of the emphasis of color difference at other 
points, of encouraging general segregation and per- 
petuating race hostility. Negroes who desire to con- 
tribute to the solution of the "problem " should, in their 
opinion, regard it as a matter of duty to attend white 
churches. Many go so far as to advocate doing away 
altogether with the separate Negro churches. An addi- 
tional argument which they advance is that individuals 
of whatever race must seek and find their proper intel- 
lectual level — which they themselves cannot do 
among their own people. It should be noted, however, 
that this group is considerably overlapped by another, 
made up of members of the "smart set" to which 
reference has been made in an earlier context, and who, 
notwithstanding any professed loyalty to principle, as 
a matter of fact frequent white churches chiefly be- 
cause of the higher position which they think to gain 
thereby in — "society." 

Many Negroes become connected with white 
churches themselves, but to a larger extent send their 
children to them, on account of the actual superior 

And such places I deem more appropriate for colored persons than 
exclusive or isolated organizations." 



228 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

advantages which they believe white churches afford, 
in the cultivation of good manners, intelligence, and 
character. Still others go to white churches either 
because they have a particular admiration for the 
pastor, or especially friendly relations with some of the 
members, or because they live in neighborhoods where 
there are few or none of their own race, or, at any rate, 
no Negro church in the vicinity. Finally, a certain 
number of Negroes are obliged to resort to white 
churches for the simple and sufficient reason that the 
religious creeds which they profess are not represented 
by separate Negro churches. The more recent and less 
common denominations, such as Christian Science, 
Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, and the various 
brands of New Thought, fall in this category. Because 
such religious fellowships are still in the zealous propa- 
gandist stage, they are more disposed to accept con- 
version to their tenets as the essential thing, and to pay 
less regard to race or color distinctions. The Negroes 
who enter these faiths are as a rule received on a 
cordial and substantial basis. 

Most of the white churches in Boston are attended, 
at least occasionally, by a few Negroes belonging to 
one or another of these groups which have been de- 
scribed; but the number in which the regular Negro 
attendance amounts to more than a slight percentage 
is very small. Usually a congregation of ordinary size 
includes only two or three of this race. In not more 
than a score of churches in the entire metropolitan dis- 
trict may a dozen Negroes be counted regularly. There 
are only five or six in which the regular Negro attend- 
ance attains really considerable proportions. Among 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 229 

these few exceptional cases, the Roman Catholic 
Cathedral and two Episcopal churches stand out most 
prominently. 

It is a fact not generally known that the Roman 
Catholics lay claim to about one thousand members 
of the Negro race in Greater Boston. The majority 
of these are immigrants or children of immigrants from 
the West Indies; others became of this faith through 
receiving their education in Catholic schools; still others 
are descendants of slaves of Catholic masters ; and the 
remainder are converts in the ordinary course. Till 
recently, all the Negro Catholics have attended the 
same services as the whites, without distinction, and 
the largest single group of them have gone to the 
Cathedral in the lower South End. In 1903, at the 
request of many of the Negroes themselves, the ex- 
periment was begun of holding at the Cathedral some 
separate masses. In 1907, this plan was given up, 
chiefly because the attendance at the separate masses 
remained small. Late in the following year another 
departure, which has proved more successful, and of 
which more will subsequently be said, was undertaken. 
It consisted in holding certain separate masses in a 
church set aside for the use of the Negroes. The latter 
still have unqualified access, however, to the general 
services elsewhere, which most of them continue to 
attend, at least occasionally. No serious friction has de- 
veloped, though in several churches, in addition to the 
Cathedral, the Negro attendance is of considerable size. 
It is, of course, natural that less difficulty should arise 
in churches of the Roman Catholic faith. The priests 
stand in a position of greater authority and influence 



230 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

over the lay members than do the ministers of Prot- 
estant denominations, and are thereby able more 
effectually to curb any expression of prejudice. The 
Negroes on their side appreciate the more equitable 
treatment thus received. Moreover, the Catholic doc- 
trine, in its strongly personal embodiment of religion 
and its definite and tangible dogmas; the direct chal- 
lenge of the confessional; and the impressive church 
buildings and rituals, — all make a powerful appeal 
to the Negro's emotional and out-flowing nature. In 
Boston, as throughout the country, the number of 
Negro Catholics is increasing. That further accessions 
from this source are desired is shown by the fact that 
in the autumn of 1908 the Roman Catholic Church in 
the United States organized a special department to 
deal with the extension of work among the Negro 
people. 

Emmanuel (Episcopal) Church is situated in the 
heart of the aristocratic Back Bay, and has one of the 
largest and richest congregations in the city. Of late 
years Negroes have been attending in increasing num- 
bers. There are two distinct church organizations, one 
for members of the parish and the other for the public 
at large. The Sunday services are open to the general 
public, but at these the Negro attendance has some- 
how not become large enough to be conspicuous. Two 
Sunday-school groups are maintained, however, and 
for all week-day services the parish and public organi- 
zations meet separately. In the parish organizations, 
only a scattering few Negroes are found. But in the 
public organizations about one third of the adults are 
Negroes, as are also nearly two thirds of the children 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 231 

in the public Sunday school. The whites with whom 
they are intermingled are members of the lower middle 
class; and thus far they have raised no serious objec- 
tion to the presence of the Negroes. Doubtless the 
fact that these white people are not members and sup- 
porters of the church, but are themselves, like the 
Negroes, beneficiaries of it, tends to restrain them from 
expressing any antipathy which they may feel. The 
Negroes, who come from far and wide, not only from 
all sections of the city but from the suburbs, are, 
furthermore, very well dressed and good mannered, 
and are thus less likely to cause objection than others 
of lower grade would be. 

The Church of the Ascension, a mission of Emman- 
uel, whose social service activities have already been 
mentioned, was established in 1886 in the Pleasant 
Street locality, but in 1890 moved to its present loca- 
tion at the corner of Washington and Newcomb Streets 
in the upper South End, near the northeast corner of 
what is now the principal Negro district. At that time 
this particular neighborhood was almost entirely 
white. But soon Negroes from the West End and else- 
where started to come into the vicinity, and it was not 
long before some of them began to attend this church. 
To-day, of about five hundred and fifty communicants, 
approximately fifty are of the Negro race. The pro- 
portionate attendance of Negroes at the services is 
sometimes greater than this, sometimes less. Occa- 
sionally, when the Negroes have been more conspicu- 
ous than usual on account of sitting together in clusters, 
or at times when the proportion of this element has 
appeared to be increasing, murmurings have arisen 



232 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

among the whites, but on the whole there has been 
little trouble. In the Sunday school, a quarter of the 
children are Negroes. Those in charge say the number 
would have been much larger, and that friction would 
have resulted, had not a rule been made that children 
whose parents are connected with other churches 
should not be admitted. 

There is probably a larger number of Episcopal 
churches which have some Negroes on their rolls than 
is the case with any other denomination. The Episco- 
palians, in fact, report nearly fifteen hundred Negro 
adherents, — of which, however, about half belong 
to the Mission of the Society of St. John the Evange- 
list, previously mentioned in connection with social 
service, and to whose religious work separate refer- 
ence will presently be made. A great many, though 
not the majority, have antecedents in the Church of 
England, being from the West Indies and Canada; 
others have come under influences similar to those 
mentioned in the case of Negro Roman Catholics; 
while a large proportion go to Episcopal churches for 
the same non-religious reason that many whites do, — 
because they think it savors of distinction. By 1904 the 
Negro attendance at Episcopal churches had increased 
to such an extent that complaints began to be made by 
the whites, and in certain churches serious friction 
threatened. In May of that year the Convention of 
the Diocese of Massachusetts appointed a commission 
to investigate the desirability of instituting separate 
missions for the Negroes. The most important parts 
of that commission's report, made in May, 1905, are as 
follows: — 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 233 

The commission finds that there are over thirty churches 
in the Diocese having colored people on their list of com- 
municants. In most cases the numbers are small, but several 
report from fifty to one hundred and fifty in attendance. 

Bearing in mind that God hath made of one blood all na- 
tions of men to dwell on the face of the whole earth, and that 
the Christian Church stands for universal brotherhood in 
Jesus Christ, the commission believes that the Church should 
extend its already effective work among the colored people 
of this Diocese. It is unanimously of the opinion that, though 
they are sometimes peculiarly isolated because of surviving 
racial prejudices, they should be reached through the same 
moral and spiritual agencies as other people. 

It recommends that the clergy and laity of all parishes and 
missions in the Diocese make special efforts to reach their 
colored neighbors. 

The Convention showed its agreement with the com- 
mission by adopting the following Resolutions : — 

That the clergy and laity of all parishes and missions in 
the Diocese should make special efforts to reach their colored 
neighbors. That both clergy and laity should make a firm 
and aggressive stand for the principle of a fair chance for 
every individual. 

This remains the oflScial Episcopal attitude. But 
though it is true that as a rule churches of this de- 
nomination accord the Negro better treatment than do 
those of other Protestant creeds, the writer is, how- 
ever, aware of no Episcopal church, with the possible 
exceptions of Emmanuel and Ascension, already men- 
tioned, the members of which actually "make special 
efforts to reach their colored neighbors," and to bring 
them in on the same basis with the whites. Episcopal 
rectors do not hold the same position of immediate 
authority over the lay members of the church as do 
Catholic priests, and so, in the matter of the attitude 



234 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

toward Negroes, prejudice on the part of the whites has 
less difficulty in asserting itself. As a matter of fact, 
this prejudice is asserting itself, and in a number of 
churches serious embarrassment has arisen. 

In the case of one of the latter, St. Peter's in Cam- 
bridge, affairs reached a crisis. Since 1900, the increase 
of Negroes in this church had been rapid. As there is 
only the single parish organization, the Negroes had to 
be accorded privileges in common with the whites. In 
the Sunday school there were no separate classes, and 
some of the mixed classes had Negro teachers. In 1906, 
some of the white parents began to object to this con- 
dition of things. As a result, a new rector who came in 
at that time separated the Negro and white children 
in most of the classes, putting each under teachers of 
their own race. This action offended the Negroes, who 
raised the cry of "Jim-crowism," and refused to be 
conciliated by the assurance that they still enjoyed 
benefits identical in kind with those of the whites, and 
that, besides, there were still a few mixed classes. Soon 
afterwards a Negro boy was expelled from the church 
for mischief-making. The Negroes took this as an 
affront, and manifested their indignation by remaining 
away from the services. A meeting of the church, in- 
cluding the Negro members, was then called to discuss 
what action should be taken. At this meeting the 
assistant rector — inadvertently, it is said — made the 
remark that he thought the white church members 
would be glad if the Negroes should withdraw alto- 
gether and form a separate church of their own. This 
gave still further offense. Though the vote of the 
meeting was to continue as before, every one expected 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 235 

that "something would happen " soon. What did hap- 
pen a few months later was a request from the Negro 
contingent that they might have a church by them- 
selves. No objection being made by the whites, St. 
Bartholomew's Church, previously a mission, was 
turned over to them. This was in 1908. Only a few 
Negroes still continue to be members of the parent 
body. 

This case has been related in some detail because, in 
a representative sense, it is significant of a general 
tendency toward the effectual, if not the open and 
avowed, exclusion of this race from white churches. 
White ministers say that the objection to the presence 
of Negroes comes from the laymen. It does, in fact, 
usually originate with the latter, but the clergymen 
appear to give at least tacit sanction. It is, indeed, 
a fact, that Negro ministers make far more effort to 
preserve and inculcate in their people a Christian atti- 
tude toward the white man, than white ministers do to 
inspire a like attitude toward the Negro. Pastors of the 
Negro race could make themselves most dangerous in- 
cendiaries, were they so minded; but nearly all of them 
choose instead to preach endless patience and un- 
bounded charity. On the other hand, it is seldom that 
a white minister refers from the pulpit to the question 
of the Negro's welfare, and when one does it is usually 
to some far-off phase of the "problem," rather than to 
the immediately pertinent consideration of how the 
white people in Boston should conduct themselves 
toward the Negro people who are right in their midst. 
In this city, as elsewhere, the church is making com- 
paratively little effort to contribute to the bringing 



236 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

about of better relations between the two races. The 
people who make up the churches are, of course, mem- 
bers of the general community and subject to its short- 
comings. It therefore follows that, as a prejudice 
against the Negroes exists in the community at large, 
the same prejudice enters into the churches, and 
affects even the pastors — the assumed leaders in 
holding up the ideals of church brotherhood. 

It is interesting, in this connection, to set in contrast 
the treatment accorded white visitors in the Negro 
churches, and that which is meted out to Negroes in 
most white churches. In the one case, as soon as the 
white visitor enters the door of the Negro church, 
several ushers hurry up to him with a pleasant welcome 
and conduct him to one of the best seats. The faces all 
about him are friendly and smiling. At the close of the 
service many cordial nods are given him; the leaders 
come up to tell him that they are glad he dropped in, 
and that they hope he will do so again. The chances 
are the minister will shake hands with him and repeat 
the invitation. Such complaisance may, of course, run 
over into obsequiousness. But, withal, the visitor must 
surely be thick-skinned if he does not feel the glow of 
human fellowship. Perhaps he may reflect that these 
people could readily enough find justification for treat- 
ing him otherwise. And he may be led to conclude 
that this race affords rather good material for genuine 
Christianity, a Christianity of the heart as well as the 
head. When, however, the tables are turned, what usu- 
ally happens? A Negro, as soon as he steps inside the 
door of a white church, must be impervious if he does 
not become aware of a decided chilliness in the atmos- 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 237 

phere, dim-eyed if he does not see glances far from 
friendly turned upon him, and dull-eared if he does not 
detect in any words which may be addressed to him 
the notes of perfunctoriness and displeasure. He is 
given a seat in the least conspicuous place. Then he is 
still embarrassed by having people pass by the pew 
where he has been put, and he finds himself left with 
abundance of elbow room unless the church is closely 
packed. As he goes out after the services, members of 
the congregation do not greet him cordially and shake 
hands with him. He is not asked to stay to any after- 
meeting, or to come again. 

Because of this prevailingly inhospitable attitude 
toward the Negroes, on the one hand, and on the other, 
the fact, of which more will subsequently be said, that 
the independent Negro churches are gradually getting 
a stronger hold on the race, the general tendency at 
present is toward a distinct decrease in Negro attend- 
ance at white churches. A contributory element in 
this result, however, is the further fact that compara- 
tively few of the Negroes who have been going to white 
churches have made any decided effort to become 
active, helpful members, and to contribute to the ad- 
vancement of church work according to their ability. 
Most of them have taken a merely passive part. They 
have, therefore, laid themselves open to the criticism 
of being of no effect from the point of view of practical 
religious endeavor. This rebuke has been the more 
justifiable in that a large proportion — probably the 
majority, indeed — of the Negroes who have dropped 
out of white churches have not then become connected 
with churches among their own people, but simply 
have not gone to church at all. 



238 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Underneath this main tendency, however, is a sub- 
current, which, though of very minor volume, is 
nevertheless too real and important to be left out of 
account. There are a considerable number of Negroes, 
each one constituting an exception to the general rule, 
who after what may be considered a period of probation 
are received into white churches cordially. Such indi- 
viduals come to be liked and respected, and, on their 
side, manifest an earnest desire to be of use, and do in 
fact render valuable service in aiding to conduct the va- 
rious church activities and in contributing generously 
from their usually slender means. Those of whom this 
is true may be considered as constituting the really 
substantial and durable element in the connection of 
Negroes with churches of the other race. Their num- 
ber, though still comparatively slight, is slowly but 
surely increasing. 

Occupying a position midway between resort of 
Negroes to white churches, on the one hand, and main- 
tenance of their own independent churches, on the 
other, stand missions established and directed by the 
whites, but set aside exclusively for the Negro race. 

Reference has already been made to the action of the 
Roman Catholics, in 1908, in instituting separate 
masses for Negroes. These are held in a church for- 
merly vacant, St. Patrick's on Northampton Street, at 
the northern boundary of the principal Negro district. 
A white priest is in charge.^ Inasmuch as thus far only 

' There are at present only two or three Negro Catholic priests in 
the United States, but a small number are now in training. In Africa, 
where many successive generations of the race have grown up under 
the Roman Catholic Church, native priests are gradually being 
installed as subordinates. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 239 

certain services are observed in this separate meeting- 
place, it can as yet hardly be called a full-fledged 
mission church for Negro Catholics, but it will prob- 
ably become such provided the latter give evidence of 
their ability to maintain it. This they have already 
done to the extent of undertaking to acquire ownership 
of the land and edifice. 

The most fully developed Negro missions, however, 
are those conducted by the Episcopalians. The estab- 
lishment of St. Augustine's Mission in the West End 
in 1885 by the previously mentioned Order of St. John 
the Evangelist, more commonly known as the Cowley 
Fathers, marked the beginning in Boston of such reli- 
gious work among the Negro population on the part of 
the other race. Following the migration of the Negroes 
to the South End, in the latter nineties, two additional 
missions were established; — St. Michael's in the 
lower South End, and St. Martin's on Lenox Street in 
the upper South End, in the principal Negro district. 
St. Michael's was abandoned in 1907, and in 1909, St. 
Augustine's and St. Martin's were united in the present 
large building erected on the latter site. About eight 
hundred Negroes are connected with this institution. 
The teaching is intense and stringent, and the attitude 
of the Fathers toward the Negro people is one of 
paternal character. The work is supported mainly by 
local contributions, the Negroes themselves contrib- 
uting a large if not a major part. Though the mission is 
independent of the jurisdiction of the Diocese, the 
Cowley Fathers have close relations with the Diocese 
and take part in its conventions. The commission 
appointed by the Diocesan Convention in 1904 to look 



240 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

into the question of establishing Negro missions, from 
whose report earlier quotation has been made, recom- 
mended also " that generous moral and material support 
be given the missions under the Society of St. John 
the Evangelist by the churchmen of the Diocese," and 
the Convention itself adopted an identical resolution. 
An arrangement has been made whereby the Diocese 
has agreed to institute no other Negro missions within 
a wide radius of St. Augustine's and of St. Martin's. 
That agreement gives the Cowley Fathers a right of 
way which will materially help them in the extension 
of their own work; but, considering the location of the 
chief Negro quarter, it is a distinct obstacle to the pro- 
motion of other similar work by the Diocese. 

St. Bartholomew's, the offshoot of St. Peter's in 
Cambridge whose origin has already been related, 
stands on the border-line between a Negro mission and 
an independent Negro church. Strictly speaking, it is 
an autonomous mission ultimately subject to the con- 
trol of the Diocese. The use of the church building 
and the parish house is contributed by the Diocese, 
and a part of the rector's salary is paid by the Arch- 
deaconry. But as respects immediate control and 
assumption of the greater part of its running expenses, 
St. Bartholomew's is essentially a Negro church. Its 
enrolled membership has grown to several hundred, 
and the average attendance reaches two hundred or 
more. The majority of members are of the better ele- 
ment of the Negroes and appear to be earnest in their 
desire to build up a strong church. The present rector 
is a young Negro of good education, who has had some 
previous experience with missions among his people.^ 
1 The Rev. Walter D. McClane. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH Ml 

If St. Bartholomew's proves a permanent success, as it 
now bids fair to do, it will no doubt be referred to by 
the other race, and in some measure by the Negroes 
themselves, as an argument in favor of the establish- 
ment of similar churches for Negroes by other denom- 
inations, as well as by the Episcopalians.^ 

Coming now to the principal, and by far the most 
important, avenue of religious expression which the 
Negroes have, we find the separate and independent 
churches which they themselves maintain. 

The first Negro church in Boston was founded in 
1805, as has been related, under the name originally of 
the African Meeting-House, and was of the Baptist 
confession. Not many years afterwards, a Methodist 
church was established. The fact that the latter was 
included within the general (i.e., the white) Methodist 
organization, perhaps furnished the occasion for the 
elder church to take the name of the First Independent 
Baptist; while in the course of time it became popu- 
larly known as the old Joy Street Church, and later 
still its name was changed to that of St. Paul's Baptist, 
which is its present form. During the Abolition period, 
an African Methodist Zion church was founded by Ne- 
groes who withdrew from the Methodist body, an Afri- 
can Methodist church was set up by another group of 
secessionists, and a schism in the old Joy Street congre- 
gation resulted in the formation of the Twelfth Baptist 

^ A step in this direction has in fact been taken in the recent 
opening of a Negro Unitarian society under the fostering care of 
the general Unitarian organization. The meeting-place is Parker 
Memorial, and a Negro minister, the Rev. Powhattan Bagnali, 
has been installed. This undertaking is still, however, in a very 
experimental stage. 



242 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Church.^ Since the war, owing to the growth of the 
Negro population, the moving of Negroes into new 
locaUties, and the rise of suburban communities, many 
other independent churches have been created. At 
present there are twenty-five in the Greater Boston 
district, of which eleven are in Boston proper, five in 
Cambridge, two in West Newton, two in Maiden, and 
the others in Woburn, West Medford, Winchester, 
Everett, and Chelsea. Of these twenty-five, seventeen 
are Baptist, three African Methodist, one African 
Methodist Zion, one Methodist, one Congregational- 
ist, one Seventh Day Adventist, and one of a sect 
which styles itself the Church of God.^ 

The local order of precedence of these denominations 
may be said to correspond with that in the country 
at large; the Baptists almost equaling in number the 
combined total of all the others. The proportion of 
Negroes of Southern birth is at its highest in this con- 
fession. The Baptists and Congregationalists, like their 
white confreres, have complete local self-government, 
the ministers being elected and dismissed by the church 
members. The several divisions of Methodists have 
limited self-government, to the extent that their min- 

^ For exact dates of the founding of these churches, and references 
to their early ministers, see Appendix, Article ii. 

^ The names of these churches are as follows: In Boston proper: — 
Calvary, Morning Star, and Ebenczer (Baptist) ; St. Mark's (Con- 
gregational) ; Seventh Day Adventist; and Church of God. In Cam- 
bridge: — Union, Mt. Olive, and St. Stephen's (Baptist); Hush, and 
St. Paul (African Methodist Episcopal). In West Newton: — Mt. 
Zion, and Myrtle Avenue (Baptist). In Maiden: — Union, and Eben- 
ezer (Baptist). In Woburn: — St. John's (Baptist). In West Med- 
ford: — Shiloh (Baptist). And Baptist churches in Everett, Chelsea, 
and Winchester. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 243 

isters, whose regular term of service is but two years, 
are appointed and removed by a district conference of 
the denomination. The African Methodists and the 
African Methodists Zion are, as has been noted, off- 
shoots of the Methodists, but are entirely discon- 
nected from the latter, as well as from each other, in 
their organization. The Methodists among the Negro 
people, though having their separate congregation, are, 
as has been said, a part of the general Methodist body, 
and so have no independent organization. 

As to the balance pro and con with respect to the 
Negro Church, the factors on the debit side consist 
partly of certain inherent elements of weakness in the 
Negro character, and partly of certain phases of the 
conditions from which the Negroes have come and 
those under which they are living in Boston to-day. 

With reference to the innate characteristics in ques- 
tion, the one of most distinctive influence, and in fact 
the only one to which previous reference has not been 
made in connection with more broadly social ten- 
dencies, is a propensity toward uncontrolled emotional- 
ism. The other traits whose effect in religious activity 
is most obvious, are the already noted general ethical 
undevelopment of this race, and its deficiencies in point 
of self-reliance and the ability for organized social 
cooperation. Regarding the conditions involved, it ap- 
pears that the proportion of Negroes who have come 
to Boston from the South is even larger within the 
churches than it is in the city's Negro population as 
a whole, amounting to nearly four-fifths of the church 
membership. These Southern immigrants are, there- 
fore, mainly responsible for church management and 



2U THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

support. They are, however, as has previously been 
stated, poorly equipped in education, and generally 
backward. Their earnings are usually not much above 
the amount needed for subsistence, and their work 
consumes the greater part of their time and energy. 
They are almost entirely lacking in business experience; 
though a church, on the material side, is virtually a busi- 
ness enterprise. All these adverse factors, it is clear, 
must severely limit the progress which the Negro 
churches are able to make. Specific reference to the 
local situation will show in what ways and to what ex- 
tent such is actually the case. 

In most of the Negro churches in Boston, the pro- 
pensity to emotionalism appears only in a form much 
modified by the Northern environment, but there is 
one in which it has free rein. This is the congregation 
of the "Church of God, Saints of Christ," which meets 
on the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Wood- 
bury Street, in the principal Negro district. It is one 
of a score or more in the United States belonging 
to the same sect, all founded by a self-announced 
Negro "prophet," by the name of William Crowdy. 
" Prophet " Crowdy, who died a few years ago of paraly- 
sis, had been a cook; but, according to his own testi- 
mony, he had revealed unto him his special divine 
mission, and thereupon proclaimed that he had come 
to save the world, beginning with the Negroes. His 
followers refer to a passage purporting to be from the 
Scriptures, and predicting that when the true prophet 
appeared, he would come "out of the pots." Crowdy, 
by virtue of his previous culinary occupation, therefore 
fulfilled the requirements. The writer had the honor 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 245 

of meeting the prophet, who proved to be a very black 
Negro, with white hair and mustache, something wrong 
with one eye, and corpulent. He estabhshed the Bos- 
ton church about ten years ago. "Elder" Plummer, a 
gaunt, tall Negro, known in the faith as "Father 
Abraham," is in charge. The congregation is composed 
of about fifty individuals who are drawn from the most 
ignorant class and who lead a sort of communistic life. 
Services of one sort or another are going on at the 
church — which is a room over a grocery store — most 
of the time, but especially on Saturday, the "seventh 
day," and Sunday. The writer has attended several 
services. The procedure of one Sunday morning may be 
given as typical. As soon as four or five of the mem- 
bers had arrived they fell to singing, without books, 
their peculiar, long-drawn-out, monotonous hymns. 
These are most rudimentary in phraseology and ideas, 
the stanzas often differing only in a single line, and 
an identical refrain usually recurring at regular inter- 
vals. One of these refrains, so far as it was possible 
to catch the words, was as follows: — 

"God was a man, 
God was a man, 
God was a man, 
And the Lord God was his name." 

Another appeared to run thus : — 

"Teach all the nations Thy commands. 
Teach all the nations Thy commands. 
Teach all the nations Thy commands. 
For the coming of the Judgment Day." 

Each newcomer at once joined in the singing. The 
songs were started in moderate tones ; after a time would 
rise, sometimes by degrees and at other times with 



246 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

startling suddenness, to a full shout, and then, toward 
the end, — an indeterminate point finally arrived at 
when every one was fully satisfied, — would subside 
to a hum or a hoarse whisper. When one song was 
finished, another would immediately be started, with- 
out any prearrangement, by some one of the congre- 
gation. The singing continually grew in volume and 
intensity. Soon the singers were marking the beat by 
the clapping of hands. Then feet as well as hands were 
brought into action. The rhythm became almost irre- 
sistible, even to an outsider. Ere long the members be- 
gan, one by one, to stand up, in order to secure greater 
freedom of motion. At length all were on their feet, 
beating their hands, stamping, turning, and twisting, 
and going through all sorts of fancy movements, each 
according to his preference and capacity. Off in one 
corner, a row of little tots, their heads scarcely rising 
above the seats, were bobbing up and down in perfect 
time. One old fellow, the most powerful-throated of 
the company, kept yelling, "Sing it! Sing it!" At 
length a young woman, good-looking and well-dressed, 
emerged from the others and began a violent dance, 
bending her knees, throwing up her arms, and bringing 
one foot down with great force at alternate beats in 
the singing. She continued this until completely ex- 
hausted. Then the singing gradually ceased. 

Next came "testifying," by the members. As each 
one got up he would say something like this, to the 
accompaniment of a sympathetic running comment 
from the others: "Members er der Church er God and 
Saints er Christ — I wants ter say I 's glad to be here 
on dis first day er der week. Bless der Lawd, befo' I 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 247 

beared der Prophet's voice I didn' know dis was der 
first day er der week — I done thought it was der las' 
day. Doncher know, I's sho now dat I's saved. Der 
Prophet done tol' us so — Bless der Lawd"; and so on. 
After the giving of testimony was completed, "Father 
Abraham" arose to preach. At first he was hesitating, 
dull, even cold, but soon he began to speak faster and 
louder, and to stamp about on the platform, till by the 
time he was well under way he left nothing to be de- 
sired in point of vehemence. His discourse was en- 
tirely without any semblance of reasoned order, being a 
hodge-podge of laudation of the prophet and exposition 
of his teachings. Every other sentence contained a 
quotation from the Bible, located with extraordinary 
accuracy by chapter and verse. The apostles were 
referred to familiarly as "Ole John," "Ole Peter." 
Incidentally, the preacher demonstrated by scriptural 
quotations that Christ was a Negro. After he finished, 
the singing started up once more, and when the writer 
finally left, a little before one o'clock, the end was still 
in the distance. 

This is an extreme example — for Boston — of the 
Negro's exhibition of uncontrolled religious emotion- 
alism. Yet even in this case, the underlying religious 
energy is accomplishing some good results. The ma- 
terial progress of this particular church has been rather 
remarkable, considering the fact that all of its members 
are by occupation odd-jobbers with meager earnings. 
The church owns, subject to a mortgage, a large frame 
building which is used as a home for widows and 
orphans, and in rented quarters profitably conducts a 
grocery store, a dry goods shop, and a restaurant. 



248 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Apart, moreover, from what may be their own pecu- 
liar mode of hfe and moral standards, as among 
themselves, the members of this sect in Boston have 
the reputation of being law-abiding, industrious, and 
honest in their relations with the rest of the com- 
munity. 

The second element which has been mentioned as 
handicapping the Negro in his practical religious 
endeavors, namely, his moral and ethical undevelop- 
ment, rises up to face him in the personal character of 
the men who occupy the pulpits of his churches. A 
considerable proportion of these Negro ministers — 
at least one quarter of them — are patently lax in their 
morals, and the good name of the majority is not free 
from more or less suspicion. The most unsavory recent 
case in point was that of the pastor of a suburban group 
of Baptists, who was proved to have had illicit rela- 
tions wholesale with women, especially young girls, 
both within and without his congregation. This man 
was brought to justice and sentenced to the House of 
Correction. There are others like him, whose evil- 
doing is equally well known, but who have thus far 
escaped the penalty. Most of them are ignorant and in- 
competent floaters and hangers-on, hailing from parts 
none too certain with credentials none too reassuring, 
and getting along prosperously with so little visible 
means of support as to warrant grave question as to 
their mode of living — which, according to report, 
consists largely in exploiting the pocketbooks of weak 
"sisters." Many of these fellows start so-called 
" missions." Some of them find a chance to preach in 
regular Negro churches now and then, and sometimes 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 249 

they succeed in imposing themselves upon such a con- 
gregation permanently. Other culprits, of a higher 
grade so far as intelligence and outwardly respectable 
standing are concerned, combine with their corrup- 
tion, as weapons of offense and defense, education, 
ability, and suavity of speech, and are intrenched 
behind the pulpits of some of the larger churches. 
One of this sort — a fat, sleek individual, at present 
connected with one of the leading Negro congrega- 
tions in the city — makes a special practice of ap- 
proaching white candidates for office and oflfering, in 
return for a substantial consideration, to deliver over 
Negro votes. 

Far more serious, however, than the immorality of 
these pulpit reprobates themselves is the tolerance of 
it and of them by the members of their churches. 
"Like priest, like people," is the obvious implication, 
and while the facts are not quite so bad as that, it is at 
least a case of living in glass houses. The ethical unde- 
velopment of the race shows itself nowhere more 
obviously than at this point. Their moral perception 
is dull; they do not fully realize the obliquity of hav- 
ing a minister of easy morals as their accredited leader. 
This is especially the case if the man in question be a 
stirring preacher, and popular. And when they do 
realize, they still lack the moral backbone to come out 
openly against the offender. One suave individual 
whose gross immorality was a matter of common 
knowledge, nevertheless kept himself for many years 
in one of the large city churches. It would have re- 
quired only some courage to convict him before the 
public. Now and then half-hearted and cautious pro- 



250 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tests were made, but there was no determined effort to 
dislodge liim. This man has now passed to his reward. 
Two other ministers brought upon themselves charges 
which, though not entirely proved, were so damaging 
that the good name of the churches involved should 
have made their resignation imperative. Both these 
men, however, continue to occupy two of the most 
important pulpits among their people. The members 
of these congregations murmured, it is true, but they 
did not rebel. Neither have the better Negro ministers 
nor the better element of the Negro community risen 
in revolt against this state of affairs. 

The further hampering characteristics of lack of 
self-reliance and incapacity in social organization, 
operating in conjunction with the comparative ab- 
sence of business experience, to which also reference 
has been made, are reflected in the financial condition 
of the Negro churches. Only one of them is entirely 
free from debt. Several are not seriously encumbered. 
But the majority are beset by debts which, in propor- 
tion to the material means of the church body, are 
simply enormous. In most instances this indebted- 
ness was incurred within the last fifteen years, when 
the present church edifices were bought. Previously, 
most of the churches in the city proper occupied land 
and buildings in the West End, which they had pur- 
chased in the early days at small cost; but when these 
congregations moved to the South End, they either 
sold their former buildings or turned them over in part 
payment for the new ones. Whether they sold or 
traded, however, they were usually worsted. For the 
new buildings they paid much more than their value 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 251 

in the open market — sometimes twice as much. In 
addition they bound themselves to pay interest far in 
excess of the prevailing rate. These damaging trans- 
actions were, in a few cases, due partly to a conspiracy 
for personal profit; between the minister or some of the 
members, or both together, on the one side, and the 
white sellers and mortgagees, on the other. In recent 
years, there have been several exposures of such diver- 
sion of church funds to private use by ministers and 
church officers, and undoubtedly much further dis- 
honesty has escaped detection. But for the most part, 
the great financial difficulty which the Negro churches 
have experienced, even in meeting interest payments, 
has been due simply to business incapacity on the part 
of both the church members and the ministers. Want 
of business initiative and aggressiveness has kept the 
Negroes from obtaining, to the extent which otherwise 
they might have, a reduction in the exorbitant interest 
rate, while lack of foresight and of a carefully worked- 
out application of available funds has proved a terrible 
obstacle to the cutting-down of the debt. The keeping 
of systematic records of receipts and expenditures is 
exceptional, and in consequence a considerable leakage 
of church moneys is more than possible. One of the 
Negro pastors who worked hardest, while he was in 
Boston, to improve the financial situation of his 
church, acknowledged to the writer that at the outset 
the meetings of his business committee well-nigh took 
all the heart out of him, they were so unbusinesslike. 
As a result of all these adverse elements combined, 
no Negro minister or Negro church has in recent years 
won in the community at large a commanding posi- 



252 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tion of respect and influence for good. While such a 
position would be harder to attain to-day than it would 
have been prior to the change of attitude toward the 
Negro race, yet the essential reason why it has not 
been attained is that the requisite merit has not made 
itself manifest. A recent pastor of one of the larger 
Negro churches was on the way to acquiring such a 
standing, when he left the city under somewhat of a 
cloud. With eloquence, this man united rare charm 
of personality, education, and intellectual ability. He 
was invited to speak at important meetings in the 
community, and was consulted by the whites on mat- 
ters affecting his people. 

So much for the debit side of the account. Passing 
now to the credit column of the balance-sheet, it is a 
fact that notwithstanding the weaknesses which have 
been pointed out, and which are so glaring as to ob- 
scure the more favorable features, the Negro church 
has already attained many fundamental elements of 
strength, and is at present making still further under- 
lying progress. 

To begin with, the Negro's propensity to emotion- 
alism has another and deeper side, which is altogether 
in his favor. This was forcibly expressed by one of 
the speakers at a recent convention of the American 
Missionary Association, himself of African descent, 
who declared that "the Negro has religiousness 
enough to save America." ^ Doubtless the tropical 
African habitat bred in the Negro race a warmth of 
religious feeling. The natives of that continent, how- 

^ This statement was made by Professor William Pickens, a 
graduate of Yale, now teaching in the South. 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 253 

ever, do not stand out so conspicuously in this re- 
spect, as compared with other primitive peoples, as 
do the members of this race in America, when com- 
pared with other elements of our country's population. 
The high degree of development of this quality in the 
American Negro is largely an outgrowth of the condi- 
tions which prevailed under slavery. Rigidly limited 
in all other directions, the slaves found full self-expres- 
sion only in their religion. Their bondage, their igno- 
rance, and their superstition, on the one hand, com- 
bined with their hope of freedom and their sturdy sense 
of innate manhood, on the other, united in impelling 
them to seek fulfillment in the religious outlet. At 
night, when they were supposed to be in bed, they used 
to slip away to some secluded rendezvous, and there 
pray and sing and give themselves over without re- 
straint to their pent-up feelings. In such secret con- 
gregation they found solace for their sufferings, com- 
fort in their sorrows, hope for deliverance, and patience 
for endless endurance. During the period of slavery, 
at least, religion was the Negro's "mighty fortress." 
The religious experience which the slaves underwent 
was, in spirit and in kind, like that undergone centuries 
ago by the early Christians in the Roman Empire. 
To-day religious fervor, of which such uncontrolled 
emotionalism as that exhibited by the "Church of 
God" is but the ignorant outpouring, still remains one 
of the most impressive characteristics of the Negro 
people. This fervor, rightly directed, cannot but prove 
an asset of the greatest strength to the race. It is 
itself, indeed, the central motive power of religious 
endeavor and achievement. 



254 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

That the aberrant display of emotion is in fact held 
well in check in nearly all the Negro churches in 
Boston has already been remarked. The advance 
which has been made in this respect is especially pro- 
nounced. At present Negro congregations are in the 
main noticeably self -restrained. In former years, what 
may be termed the dress-parade collection was re- 
garded as an indispensable feature. This was a pro- 
cedure in which, to the accompaniment of lusty music 
from the choir, the members, as the spirit moved 
them, went forward and deposited their offering on 
a table placed before the pulpit. This gave the fem- 
inine portion of the congregation an excellent oppor- 
tunity to display new gowns. It was also effectual in 
swelling the size of the collection. In a majority of 
the Negro churches, nevertheless, this custom is now 
being abolished. 

Paralleling the ascendancy of higher forms of reli- 
gious expression among the church members, thus 
indicated, is a decided improvement in point of educa- 
tion and intellectual standards on the part of Negro 
ministers. To-day there is comparatively little of the 
"shouting" and "exhorting" of days gone by; on the 
contrary, there is a far larger measure of intelligent 
appeal to reason and common sense. There are more 
and better Negro theological schools than there were 
fifteen or twenty years ago. Moat of the ministers of 
this race in Boston have received their education either 
at such schools or, in some cases, at white institutions 
of recognized standing. 

The progress which is most difficult to discern in 
the Negro churches is that pertaining to standards of 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 255 

morality. The scandals to which reference has been 
made have a very discouraging effect, not only upon 
white people who want to help the Negroes, but still 
more noticeably upon the Negro people themselves. A 
minister whose character is above reproach remarked 
to the writer, "Why! I almost feel ashamed to appear 
on the streets in my clerical garb and to be recognized 
as a Negro clergyman." The very fact, however, that 
the Negroes are conscious of the disgrace thus brought 
upon them is one of the most hopeful elements in the 
situation. In spite of the recent unsavory record in 
this respect, moreover, it is a fact that the Negro com- 
munity is to-day more sensitive to moral delinquency 
on the part of its ministers than it has been in the 
past, and that in general the moral standards which it 
applies to the churches are higher. Though it is true 
that most of the delinquent pastors have continued 
to hold their pulpits, it is also true that to-day there 
is more open discussion of this bad state of affairs, 
more protest against it, and more determination to 
remedy it, than there has ever been before. A fact the 
significance of which does not appear on the surface is 
that the scandals have occurred chiefly in Baptist 
churches. Now it must be taken into consideration 
that, as stated at an earlier point, each Baptist church 
is completely independent and subject to no control 
from without. For this reason, it is sometimes ex- 
tremely difficult for the members to dislodge a bad 
minister, even when a majority of them genuinely 
desire to do so. In various ways the culprit, with a 
few trusty allies to lend assistance, is able to obstruct 
measures aimed against him, while at the same time 



256 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

gathering in new members pledged to his support. 
This is, indeed, the method that has usually been fol- 
lowed. In one church, the opposition to the pastor 
became so strong that finally a vote was passed calling 
upon him to resign. But by cunning manipulation he 
and his adherents actually obtained a subsequent vote 
declining to accept his resignation. There have been 
two recent cases, however, in which guilty ministers 
have actually been forced out. One of these was that 
of the suburban Baptist church, previously men- 
tioned, where the commitment of the offender to the 
House of Correction was the final result of charges 
lodged against him by members of his own race. The 
other case occurred in a Zion African Methodist 
church, protest on the part of the better element among 
the members being carried into effect by the denomina- 
tional district conference. These two instances of 
effective protest against pulpit corruption afford hope 
for a more general demonstration to the same end on 
the part of the better element of the Negro people. 

It is unfortunate in this connection that the average 
white person's impression of Negro ministers is formed 
from occasional contact with, or, still more commonly, 
rumors and newspaper reports about, those of the 
worst sort. A white clergyman once said to the writer, 
with reference to one of the Negro pastors of the better 
type, "It is a pity that white people do not come into 
contact with Negroes like him. He is one for whom I 
have as deep a respect as for any white man — a fine, 
clean, intelligent Christian gentleman." At least a 
quarter of the Negro ministers merit equal commenda- 
tion. These men are pastors in the original simple 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 257 

sense of that term. They live in the midst of the 
"common people" of their race. Their salaries have 
not yet reached a point which permits them to view 
the struggle for existence impersonally and compla- 
cently. Not only their sympathies, but the facts of 
their own daily life, render them keenly alive to the 
hardships of their fellows. Their churches are not so 
large, prosperous, and well organized as to allow them 
to dispense funds and give orders from a comfortable 
desk chair. They verily do their work and earn their 
bread in the sweat of their brows. As the needs of their 
people are simple but real, the help which they give is 
homely but true. One Sunday morning the writer 
chanced to attend the church of a minister of this 
sturdy mould. A deacon was speaking from the pul- 
pit, bewailing the "terrible conditions " of the Negroes, 
calling them "a people without a home, a race without 
a country," and urging colonization in Africa. When 
he had concluded, the pastor himself rose and thus 
quietly expressed his own attitude: "Our brother's 
heart is full this morning. He has given us much to 
think about. But I do not agree with all he has said. 
I think the United States is the home of the Negro. 
He has been here nearly three hundred years, and is no 
longer a foreigner. He has become a taxpayer and a 
voter. He is in the professions and in business thou- 
sands strong. His situation is, indeed, bad in many 
ways, but it is far better than it might be, and it is 
improving every day. I did not intend this morning 
to speak about our conditions, but I cannot let you 
leave this service without giving you a hopeful view of 
the future. For many years I have watched the prog- 



258 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ress of my people, and I want you to know I am 
optimistic." Negro ministers of the stamp of this man 
are receiving increasing support from the better class 
of the Negro community, and are being held up as 
examples with growing respect. They are coming to 
be accorded a position of relatively greater influence 
among their people than used to be the case in the 
past, when the minister's personal character was in 
fact given far less thought than his capacity to exhort, 
and on occasion to quote Latin or some other language 
which the congregation could not comprehend. All of 
which surely bears witness to the development of 
higher religious-moral standards. 

Viewing the situation on the more material side, the 
mere increase in the number of Negro churches in Bos- 
ton, from five at the close of the war to twenty-five 
to-day, - — the simple fact that these churches have 
been organized and maintained, — is in itself signifi- 
cant of religious progress in the rough. The Negroes 
have held to their churches with remarkable tenacity. 
Though there have been instances of churches going 
unused for a time on account of internal dissension, 
financial inabilities, or other causes, there have been 
but few cases of ])ermanent abandonment. In addi- 
tion, the church buildings are to-day larger, more 
attractive, and more comfortably furnished than ever 
before. In most of the churches the membership has 
been steadily growing. ;^The Charles Street African 
Methodist, for example, added, in the three years 
1908-10, 369 new members, which, allowing for those 
who dropped out, meant a net gain of about 250. In 
approximately the same period, the Sunday school 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 259 

grew from 162 to 548. As this is next to the largest 
Negro church in point of membership, its recent gains 
are somewhat above the average. That similar growth 
is general, however, is shown by the record of the Cal- 
vary Baptist Church, one of the smaller ones, which in 
1903 had only 95 members, while in 1910 it had over 
300. 

Though, as has been said, the majority of the 
churches are still heavily in debt, it is at the same time 
true that a majority are making progress in reducing 
their debts. The Zion African Methodist Church, for 
instance, assumed a debt of $59,500 in 1903 when it 
purchased its present edifice. Since then it has paid 
off $28,500 of this debt, which as a result stands to-day 
at $31,000. What a highly creditable achievement 
this has been appears when the material means of the 
church members, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
the regular yearly expenses of merely keeping the 
church going, are taken into account. This congrega- 
tion includes about 635 members, of whom more than 
ninety per cent are of the laboring class, and not far 
from two thirds women. The present annual expenses, 
exclusive of any payments on the principal of the debt 
but including interest, amount to about $6000. This 
has meant an average contribution of at least $9.40 
from each member. When allowance is also made for 
frequent extra collections taken up in behalf of South- 
ern schools, for money expended in the relief of dis- 
tress, and for disbursements in other directions, as 
well as for miscellaneous individual contributions for 
special cases of which no stated account is kept, the 
yearly expenditure per capita must be set at well 



260 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

above $10. That the members, in spite of the meager- 
ness of their earnings, give this much on the average 
each year to their church, is a performance which merits 
high praise in itself — not to mention paying $28,500 
in eight years on the accumulated debt besides. The 
pastor states that there have, indeed, been occasions 
when each man and woman has had to sacrifice the 
wages of an entire week. Nor is this particular church 
exceptional in this regard; in most of the others equal 
sacrifices are being made and similar results are being 
accomplished. The members of Negro churches 
undoubtedly contribute several times more money, 
in proportion to their means, than church members of 
the other race. 

So long as the Negro churches continue to be debt- 
ridden, it is hardly to be expected that charitable and 
social betterment work, of the character to which white 
churches are devoting such marked attention and for 
which there is the utmost need in the Negro com- 
munity, will exceed very modest proportions. For the 
most part the church activities do not extend beyond 
the narrower religious limits. Yet the progress which 
is being made in the new direction is substantial. The 
church which is doing most along these lines, and whose 
example may be cited as indicating what an increasing 
proportion of the others are in lesser degree attempting, 
is the Charles Street African Methodist, already 
referred to in another connection. The fact that its 
debt amounts only to $7000 at five per cent interest 
puts this church in a favorable position to extend its 
usefulness. There are senior and junior boards of 
stewardesses, and also a board of deaconesses, which 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 261 

have as their special function assistance of the poor 
and needy. The collections of the first Sunday in each 
month are turned over to the senior stewardesses, who 
expend about $500 a year in relief and help. The 
junior stewardesses, besides paying all the interest on 
the debt, make charitable use of over $200 a year, and 
the deaconesses of about $300. In this church are also 
a number of well-to-do individuals who assist gener- 
ously in cases of need which cannot be met with the 
collective funds. Still more important than the money 
expenditure, however, is the genuine, earnest personal 
thought and service which are devoted to these hope- 
ful out-reachings in directions of community uplift. 

The sociability and associativeness which are in- 
herent in the Negro nature are fundamental assets for 
organized religious progress. White ministers find 
themselves obliged to keep up an unremitting effort to 
popularize their churches, and those who succeed are 
regarded as having accomplished something remark- 
able. Negro ministers are generally free from this 
burden, for with this race going to church is popular 
beyond any possible doubt. The majority of the Ne- 
gro people, kept hard at work through the week, find 
the church the best place at which to meet their 
friends and exchange the latest news. The Negroes, 
too, even as others, like on Sunday to show their 
best clothes and to inspect those of their neighbors. 
Moreover, the music, especially the congregational 
singing, together with all the emotional stimulation 
connected with the services, appeals strongly to their 
responsive natures. 

While these various attractions help to swell church 



262 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

attendance, a deeper element of strength consists in 
the traditional place of primacy which the Negro 
church has occupied in the life of this race since its 
emancipation. The churches were the Negro's first, 
and in the South for many years their only, institu- 
tions. They were the centers of organization, not only 
for religious objects, but for all purposes. To-day they 
still retain the major part of this unique significance. 
Previous remark has been made of the fact that in 
Boston the social progress of the Negroes has not yet 
reached the point of producing full-fledged institutions, 
with domiciles of their own. This statement should, 
however, be amended by the qualifying clause, "out- 
side of the churches"; for the latter constitute a most 
important exception to the rule. They provide the 
largest, most comfortable, and best equipped gather- 
ing-places of their own which the Negroes have. 
Meetings of many different kinds are held in them. 
Consequently they fulfill relatively a far larger general 
function in the Negro community than do white 
churches in the white community. This explains why, 
as previously noted, the Negro churches both fol- 
lowed and furthered the migration of this race from the 
old West End colony to the South End. So far as 
concerns a certain unquestioning acceptance of spirit- 
ual authority, the attitude of the mass of Negroes 
toward their ministers approximates, moreover, to 
that of the mass of Roman Catholics toward their 
priests. The substance of the whole situation was 
compressed in a remark which one of the Negro 
pastors made to the writer: "Take their churches 
away from the Negro people," said he, "and you pull 
down the mainstay of their social order." 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 263 

That there is a distinct and well-grounded move- 
ment among the Negroes toward a deeper realization 
of the central and vital importance of the Negro 
church, not only in its religious but also in its social 
and ethical value, is the fact which holds out fullest 
promise for the future. Though some small gradual 
increase may be expected in what has been called the 
substantial and exceptional part of Negro attendance 
at white churches, the unsubstantial major part of 
that attendance will in all likelihood continue to 
diminish, for the reason, principally, that these 
Negroes themselves will come to see that their posi- 
tion in white churches is lacking in dignity and prac- 
tical effectiveness, and that they are not deriving 
therefrom a sufficient increment of solid satisfaction. 
Missions for Negroes, under the direction of the other 
race, will doubtless hold their own and may consider- 
ably increase their following. These serve a useful in- 
termediary function between the white church, on the 
one hand, and the Negro church, on the other; at once 
relieving the former of possible embarrassment and 
friction, while exerting an influence along educational, 
disciplinary, and generally preparatory lines, among 
certain elements of the Negro race not yet arrived at a 
point qualifying them for independent organization. 
But when all is said, the fact that such missions inher- 
ently suggest racial dependence will limit their accept- 
ability to the Negroes in general. The independent 
Negro church, in spite of all its present shortcomings, 
is nevertheless the natural and logical medium of reli- 
gious expression for the Negro people. And the Negroes 
are in fact rallying around their church. As yet this 



264 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

movement is most clearly observable among the sturdy 
rank and file, as should and indeed must be the case if 
the church is to get its essential grip on the mass of the 
race. At the same time it is also true that, to a very 
appreciable extent, the middle and upper classes are 
either being aroused from hitherto complete indiffer- 
ence to religious forces, and brought into active connec- 
tion with the churches of their own people; or, in the 
case of others, converted from their previous futile 
efforts to gain standing in white churches. The 
Negroes of these higher gradations in the economic- 
social scale are bringing to the service of the Negro 
church not only the increased material means and some 
degree of the practical business experience which are 
almost indispensable factors in its progress, but also 
superior education and refinement, and generally more 
advanced standards. They are the element who should 
be the natural church leaders, and they are now in fact 
entering upon the exercise of such leadership. They 
are helping to put the churches on a sounder financial 
basis, are strengthening their moral tone, and gradu- 
ally are building up a more efficient religious organiza- 
tion. 

When, then, full account is taken of these innate 
elements of strength and this underlying progress, it is 
evident that an affirmative and favorable answer must 
be given to the broadly fundamental questions which 
were proposed at the outset, with reference to the 
religious factors in the life of the Negro people. It 
appears that the Negroes are, indeed, applying their 
religious resources in more practical ways and to bet- 
ter purpose; and that, furthermore, a fundamental 



THE NEGRO CHURCH 265 

tendency toward religious coherence and solidarity, in 
and about the Negro church, is clearly manifest among 
them. The Negro community is, in short, bringing 
religion more effectually to bear in the betterment of 
its conditions and in the solution of its problems. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 

The Negro's most direct means of safeguarding and 
promoting his well-being, so far as these ends can be 
accomplished through law and public action, is had in 
his possession of the ballot, with its accompanying 
privileges and powers. In the use which he makes of 
the ballot, moreover, is to be found the most immedi- 
ate and specific test of his interest in the welfare of the 
community at large, and of the character and tendency 
of his own contribution thereto. Such being the case, 
certain general inquiries suggest themselves as having 
pertinence and importance in this connection. 

First, from the broader point of view of the whole 
community: Does the Negro take advantage of the 
right to vote, and does he manifest an active concern 
in political affairs? In other words, is he of merely 
negative, or of positive, political effect? If positive, 
then does his influence count on the side of ignorance 
or of intelligence, venality or honesty, degraded poli- 
tics or good government? Is there any marked tend- 
ency, either downward or upward, in these respects? 
Secondly, from the point of view of the more or less dis- 
tinct interests of the Negro himself: Have the Negroes 
turned the ballot to good account in their own behalf? 
Have they come to have a fuller and more intelligent 
appreciation of its potential value as a practical means 
for achieving desired ends? Have they profited by 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 267 

their numbers to combine and organize for political 
purposes? Have they manifested any measure of 
political self-reliance and independence as a racial 
group? Have they, finally, as a total result, succeeded 
in obtaining a substantial political footing in the com- 
munity, and in making themselves a recognized factor 
in the affairs of the body politic? 

Previous note has been made, in connection with 
the general narrative, of the outstanding features of the 
Negro's political history, from early days down to the 
time of the recent change of front toward this race on 
the part of the whites, the crucial stage of which was 
roughly marked by the year 1895. Before proceeding 
to take account of the subsequent period, however, it 
will be serviceable, as affording historical background 
and perspective, briefly to review the salient points of 
the preceding political development. 

The right to vote has apparently been possessed by 
the Negro in Boston ever since the test case of the 
Cuffes which arose in 1764; and, at any rate, has clearly 
been his since the adoption of the Body of Liberties of 
1790. But prior to the Abolitionist agitation, the pro- 
portion of Negroes who exercised this right was prac- 
tically negligible. That campaign of propaganda, how- 
ever, maintained for over thirty years, awakened the 
majority of the Negroes to a realizing sense of their 
citizenship ; while in the endeavor to put strong anti- 
slavery men in office they found a sufficient inducement 
to make their votes count. Yet before the war the 
Negro's participation in political affairs went no fur- 
ther than voting or petitioning. With a single excep- 
tion, to which reference has previously been made, 



268 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

they held no public positions, either elective or ap- 
pointive; for the reason, mainly, that nine tenths 
of their race in the country at large being still held as 
slaves, friendly sentiment had not, even in Boston, 
reached the point of elevating them to office.^ 

Through the conventions and committees of Aboli- 
tion days, however, the Negroes gained considerable 
experience in methods akin to those of politics, which 
subsequently gave them greater confidence in advanc- 
ing their claims. After the war they of course expected 
to be of more political consequence. But whatever 
effort they exerted on their own behalf was of second- 
ary importance and effect, for they were immediately 
made the proteges of white friends and enthusiasts, at 
whose hands they forthwith became recipients of 
bountiful patronage. During a period of twenty years 
at least, the outflowing favor of the other race was the 
potent factor in the appointment of Negroes to many 
respectable posts and in their election to the City 
Council and the State Legislature. Not till about 1885 
did they themselves reach the point where, by virtue 
of having become so numerous in the West End as to 
comprise over half the voters in the Republican ma- 
jority of old Ward 9, they were in a position effectu- 
ally to demand representation. But though thereafter 
their numbers constituted the most apparent reason 
for their political prosperity, the continued though 
diminishing favor of the whites was still its underlying 
cause. 

In 1895, as has also been previously stated, the city 

* The single exception referred to was that of Lewis Haj'den's 
messengership in the office of the Massachusetts secretary of state. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 269 

underwent a political redistricting.^ Ward lines were 
altered to the form which they have to-day. As a 
result the Negro colony in the West End was split in 
two. A small portion of it was put into the present 
Ward 8, the rest into the present Ward 11. In Ward 8, 
which from the beginning has been controlled by the 
Democrats, the Negroes became, politically speaking, 
a negligible quantity. Though in Ward 11, which was 
even more strongly Republican than former Ward 9, 
they formed a large and, for a few years, increasing 
element, their proportion among the voters of that 
party was reduced from the fifty per cent or more of 
former Ward 9, to less than fifteen per cent. Thus was 
undermined whatever political strength they had ac- 
quired or were on the way to acquiring through mere 
\ force of numbers in that section. This mischance was 
coincident, in point of time, with the decisive formation 
of the new attitude toward the Negro, one of the 
principal elements of which has been the withdrawal 
from this race of that special favor and indulgence 
which prevailed during the earlier post-bellum period. 
Though in political affairs this reaction of public opin- 
ion with respect to the Negro did not at once become 
fully manifest, it was by that time, nevertheless, pre- 
determined and under way. As, therefore, the year 
1895 marked a general realignment of conditions, by 
which the Negro has been forced back upon his own 
resources, it ushered in an order under which he has 
been compelled to look out for himself in a political 
way. Thus it is from that year, and not before, 

* Such redistrictings are made from time to time on account of 
increase and shifting of population, and annexation of new territory. 



270 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

that the political record of the Negro, on his own feet 
and in his own right, really dates. 

What has that record been, and what are the ele- 
ments which have entered into and determined it? 

The most obvious index to the political standing of 
any particular group in the community consists of the 
number and importance of elective offices obtained by 
members of that group. In the absence of special 
sentiment, election to office implies either public 
approval on a basis of substantial merit, effective 
political organization, or, as usually holds true, a com- 
bination of both these elements. The application of 
this test to the case of the Negroes will, therefore, 
afford some introductory evidence, at least, as to how 
the latter have fared, on the political side, during the 
recent period. 

Immediately preceding the redistricting to which 
reference has been made, and in line with the previous 
long-standing policy, a Negro, William L. Reed, had 
been elected as a representative in the Legislature 
from old Ward 9, for the year 1896. He was reelected 
from the present Ward 1 1 for the year following, out 
of regard for the custom of allowing each man to serve 
two terms. But the next year both the representatives 
from that ward were white. Reed was the last of his 
race to be elected to the Legislature from Boston 
proper, terminating the long line which had begun in 
1866. In the case of the Common Council the Negro 
vote was still reckoned of sufficient importance to let 
the Negroes continue to have one of the ward's three 
members of that body.^ Meanwhile, however, the 

* For list of Negro common councilmen down to 1895, see chapter 
lu. Just before the redistricting of that year, Stanley L. Ruffia 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 271 

emigration of the Negroes away from the West End 
had been going on rapidly, with the result of still further 
reducing their proportion of the voters in that section. 
That decided the matter. Thereafter, it was only the 
influence of long custom, and the good-will of the white 
Republicans of the ward, which kept a Negro in the 
Council; and in 1908, the representation previously 
accorded this race was finally discontinued. 

When the Negro colony in the West End was begin- 
ning to diminish, the colony in the lower South End, 
about Pleasant Street and in the adjoining district, 
included in present Ward 10, was, as previously noted, 
in the ascendant. That ward, too, has always been 
preponderantly Republican. By 1898, the Negroes 
formed over fifteen per cent of the Republican voters. 
Five years earlier, as already mentioned, they had 
first been given one of the councilmen. From that 
time, with brief lapses, this representation was con- 
tinued.^ About 1900, the proprietor of a so-called 

had been reelected for a third term from former Ward 9, and thus 
served through 1896. A lapse of a year intervened; then from the 
present Ward 11, Edward H. Armistead was elected, and served for 
the three years 1898-1900. He was succeeded by S. William Simms, 
who served for the four years 1901-04. The latter, a janitor by occu- 
pation, was an interesting character and a favorite among his white 
colleagues. He was of a pious turn of mind, and used to take it upon 
himself to rebuke any of his fellow-members who indulged in profane 
or irreverent language. When the meetings were opened with 
prayer, he was frequently called upon. He was followed by Dr. Isaac 
L. Roberts, one of the leading Negro physicians, who served for the 
four years 1905-08. 

^ The pioneer, as mentioned at an earlier point (cf. chapter in), 
was Charles H. Hall, who served for the four years 1893-96. His 
successors were: 1898, David R. Robinson; 1900-01, Osborn A. 
Newton; 1903-06, Charles W. M. Williams; 1908-09, J. Henderson 
Allston. 



272 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

"club," which holds a license to sell liquor, became the 
Negro "boss" in the ward, being recognized as such 
by the white "boss." Whatever this man's alleged 
shortcomings in other respects may be, he must at 
least be given credit for much more political sagacity 
and ability than most of the Negro aspirants for 
leadership. Largely through his exertions the Negro 
voters in the ward were so well organized, and made 
to contribute so substantially to Republican intrench- 
ment in that quarter, that there appeared to be a 
prospect of having a member of the race elected to the 
Legislature. A semi-agreement was formed with the 
local white politicians that the Negro councilman from 
the ward, whose fourth consecutive term expired in 
1906, and who had shown marked capacity, should be 
selected for this promotion. But for various reasons, 
among them the lack of sufficient insistence on the 
part of the Negroes, this result was not brought about 
at that time; while the previously mentioned tend- 
ency toward a decline in the Negro population of that 
section has forestalled its subsequent realization. 

In 1909, the Common Council was abolished by the 
adoption of the present city charter. It so happened 
that Ward lO's Negro representative in the Coun- 
cil that year, J. Henderson AUston, was the senior 
member of that body, by virtue of his former election 
from old Ward 9 in 1894. In that capacity it fell to 
him to preside at the opening session. This was the 
first time that a Negro had performed that function. 
AUston's brief remarks to his colleagues were the sub- 
ject of favorable comment. "Allow me to felicitate 
you," he said, "upon your election to a seat in the 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 273 

Common Council in the great city of Boston. It is, 
indeed, a very high privilege to be entrusted thus in 
part with the preservation and destiny of a city so rich 
in the traditions of all that mankind loves to honor 
and revere. And need I add that it is my sincere desire 
that this year shall prove to each and all of us a period 
of boundless happiness and prosperity.'* That we shall 
honorably demean ourselves here, so as to show our 
gratitude and to merit the approval of those whom we 
have the honor to serve, will be only in keeping with 
the exalted traditions of our predecessors in these seats. 
And surely the most earnest hope of every member-elect 
must be one in this, that 'as God was with our fa- 
thers, so may He be with us.'" These were creditable 
words to be spoken by the last Negro member of Bos- 
ton's Common Council in the last year of its existence. 
Deferring, for the present, reference to the political, 
situation in Boston's principal Negro colony in the 
upper South End and lower Roxbury section, and pass- 
ing outward to the suburbs included in the metropoli- 
tan district, chief interest attaches to Cambridge. 
There the Negroes form a large element of the voters 
in three wards, and in one of these they poll approxi- 
mately fifty per cent of the Republican strength.^ 
Political conditions in Cambridge, as they particu- 
larly affect the Negroes, have differed from those of 
Boston proper in two important respects. There has 
been more departure in municipal elections from na- 
tional party lines, — that is, more division upon 
strictly municipal issues. This state of affairs has, on 

* The wards referred to are 6, 7, and 4, the latter being the one 
with the largest Negro population. 



274 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the one hand, worked against the fostering of the 
Negroes by the RepubHcans for purposes of city 
politics, to the extent that they are so cultivated in 
Boston, and in so far has tended to keep them from 
getting as many offices as they otherwise might. In the 
ward where the Negroes are most numerous, indeed, 
a Negro has never been elected to office. But, on the 
other hand, the members of this race in Cambridge 
have gained a special increment of political importance 
from the very fact that their vote has been more 
largely sought by both sides, in divisions on municipal 
matters irrespective of party. Furthermore, the change 
of attitude on the part of the whites toward this ele- 
ment of the population has not gone quite so far in 
suburban Cambridge as it has in Boston proper, and 
politically as well as otherwise the Negroes are there 
ranked somewhat higher in the community. 

Those who have been put in public positions in 
Cambridge have usually been chosen with more regard 
to their individual merits. Such has been the case with 
the only two Negroes who have held elective offices in 
that suburb during the recent period. Clement G. 
Morgan was elected to the local Common Council 
from a ward where the proportion of Negro voters is 
slight, and served in that body for the two years 1895- 
96. He was then elected alderman, which place he 
filled for the two years following. In 1899 and again in 
1900, he was one of the ward's Republican nominees for 
the Legislature, but failed of election. For a long time 
he has been chairman of his party's ward committee, 
notwithstanding that he is its only Negro member.^ 

1 For mention of Morgan in connection with the equal rights 
agitation, see Appendix, article ni. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 273 

W, H. Lewis, to whom several important references 
have already been made, was chosen as a councilman 
from another ward where the Negro vote is small, 
and served in that capacity for the three years 1899- 
01. He was then elected a representative in the Legis- 
lature, which position he filled during the year 1902. 
He holds the double distinction of having been the last 
Negro member of the Common Council of Cambridge, 
and the last Negro member of the Legislature of the 
State of Massachusetts. 

In only two other suburbs have Negroes held elec- 
tive offices. In Chelsea a member of this race, who has 
taken a considerable part in local civic affairs, was 
elected, entirely on his individual worth, to the posi- 
tion of alderman, and served in that role five years. ^ 
Not long ago there was a Negro member on the Com- 
mon Council of Everett. 

So far, therefore, as election to public office is indi- 
cative of the Negro's political standing, two facts 
become evident. The first is that this race has received 
a measure of recognition of this kind in the body poli- 
tic which is altogether substantial, especially when 
viewed in the light of the Negro's small proportion of 
the population.^ Set over against this fact, however, is 
another, which relates to the tendency involved. It 
appears that since 1897, with the exception of the 
single year 1902, there have been no Negroes in the 
Legislature; that since 1901 there have been no 

^ William J. Williams, the lawyer, who is also captain of the 
Negro company (Company L) of the State Militia. His term as 
alderman was 1902-06. 

2 As previously stated, only 1.7 per cent in the Greater Boston 
district. 



276 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Negroes in either branch of the Cambridge City Coun- 
cil; and that when the Common Council of Boston 
proper was abolished in 1909, there was but one Negro 
member in that body, as compared with three for the 
earlier years 1894-95. In other words, the Negroes 
have in this respect suffered a gradual subsidence, till 
the number of elective offices held by them has at last 
declined to zero. In part, this falling-off has been due 
to causes for which the Negroes themselves were not 
in any way to blame. The redistricting of the city, and 
the abolition of the Common Council, were general 
events over which they had no control. Likewise the 
migration of this race, away from the West End colony 
and more recently from that in the lower South 
End, which has had the effect of terminating its politi- 
cal representation in the former section and of pre- 
venting the election of one of its members to the 
Legislature from the latter, is a movement which can- 
not be held to the Negro's political discredit. Down 
below these fortuitous and transient elements, how- 
ever, are others which must be charged in part against 
the Negro himself, and in part against his past and 
present conditions. Of these, which are more deter- 
minate and continuous in their operation, and which 
have tended to produce, and in fact have entered very 
largely into, the final outcome in the matter of elective 
offices, account may now appropriately be taken. 

Among the Negro's inherent characteristics, two 
especially, to both of which attention has already been 
called in other connections, count seriously to his dis- 
advantage in the political field. These are, — first, the 
lack of self-reliance; and second, the deficiency in 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 277 

the capacity for social cooperation. The former short- 
coming tends to perpetuate the political dependence 
of the Negroes upon the whites, and to keep them from 
displaying initiative and generally asserting them- 
selves. The latter shows itself in an inability to sub- 
ordinate personal and minor differences to an inclusive 
and effective organization and a general fixed policy. 
The propensities of the Negroes to "backbite" one an- 
other, to be jealous and envious of each other's suc- 
cess, to quarrel and to split into continually changing 
factions, crop out conspicuously and damagingly in 
their political conduct. 

As to the conditions from which the great mass of 
the Negroes in Boston have come and those under 
which they are living at present, it can hardly be 
questioned that these have been and are still, in the 
main, adverse to political progress. The great majority 
of immigrants from the South, no less because of their 
own ignorance and lack of interest in political affairs 
than because of their previous exclusion from politics 
by the Southern whites, have acquired next to no po- 
litical experience and understanding. Even after tak- 
ing up their abode in Boston they tend, through their 
own inertia, to remain in a benighted state. A large 
proportion of the newcomers from other parts of the 
North are, as has been said, of the migratory sort, here 
one day and gone the next. A great many of them are 
not sufficiently interested in the local situation to take 
the trouble of registering as voters. Most of the immi- 
grants from Canada and the West Indies are not even 
naturalized, the former merely through indifference, the 
latter because they expect to return to the Islands. 



278 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

In Boston, the great mass of the Negroes are immersed 
in the ever-present problem of earning their daily 
bread, and are, besides, peculiarly subject to many irreg- 
ularities of working conditions, so that they have but 
little time to inform themselves with respect to politi- 
cal questions or to attend to political duties. Many of 
those who work as porters and waiters on the cars and 
boats, or who are employed at summer hotels, are often 
away from Boston on voting days. 

By 1895, moreover, as has previously been noted, 
the Negroes had lost, either through death or retire- 
ment from activity, nearly all of the capable leaders to 
whom they owed a great part of their political good 
fortune up to that time. These men had gained the 
attention and the respect of the whites, and com- 
manded the following of their own race. Neither the 
junior recruits who have been mentioned as reinforcing 
the Old Guard in its fight for equal rights, nor those of 
the race whose election to office in recent years has 
implied some degree of influence, have been able to 
take the place of the leaders who passed away. This 
has not been owing to inferior ability on the part of 
these younger men, for in education and mentality 
most of them are on a higher level. It has been due to a 
number of concurrent conditions. The fact that the 
Negroes of the upper class have in large part assumed 
a position aloof from the mass of the race has disqual- 
ified the majority of this element for political director- 
ship. The division which has arisen between the 
agitators for equality, on the one hand, and the sup- 
porters of Washington's economic policy, on the other, 
has worked against harmony of effort; many of those 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 279 

who might otherwise take command being so at vari- 
ance among themselves that they cannot act as a 
group, and are continually blocking one another's 
efforts. The quarrels of the aspirants for control have 
set a bad example to the rank and file, with endless 
squabblings as a result. The increasing stress upon 
material success and the growth of the commercial 
spirit, which are characteristic of the present day 
and which affect the Negroes along with the rest of the 
community, have worked against close interest and 
active participation in political affairs on the part of 
the more substantial element of this race, and have 
tended especially to keep Negroes of such standing 
from assuming the responsibilities and making the 
sacrifices incumbent upon worthy political leadership. 
Finally, the prevailing tendency on the side of the other 
race, with relation to the political claims of the Negro, 
has been, as already suggested, toward a replacement 
of the generous sentiment which formerly held sway 
by considerations of a more dispassionate character. 
The general disposition has been to accord the Negro 
no more recognition, in the way of positions, than that 
for which he could render back at least the full equiva- 
lent, usually in the form of votes, of value received. 
It is true that the Republicans have shown themselves 
desirous of retaining the Negro's allegiance, and that at 
the same time the Democrats have extended him a 
welcoming hand. But in harmony with present-day 
methods in American cities, "practical" politicians of 
both parties have shown themselves less generous in 
the bestowment of offices and more liberal in the use 
of funds. Thus the political appeal made to the Negro, 



280 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

and the inducements held out to him, have tended to 
fall to the lowest plane. 

Such are the obstacles, as they arise from certain in- 
capacitating elements of character and certain phases 
of the previous and present conditions of the Negroes 
themselves, on the one hand, and from the attitude 
of the whites toward the Negroes, on the other, 
against which the people of this race have had to con- 
tend in the political field. The manner and, more 
roughly, the measure, in which these obstacles have 
actually hampered and retarded the Negroes in a 
political way throughout the Greater Boston district, 
may be judged by concrete example taken from the 
principal Negro center, in the upper South End and 
lower Roxbury section. The major part of this colony 
is included within the limits of Ward 18. There, in 
what should be to-day the Negro's political strong- 
hold, may be seen the sorry workings, in combination, 
of the various adverse factors which have now been 
pointed out. 

Till within a few years, at least, there has never been 
in Ward 18 any Negro who has succeeded, even mea- 
surably, in making himself a capable political leader, 
with the interests of his race clearly at heart. On the 
contrary, the proprietors of a couple of liquor-selling 
and gambling "clubs," which are situated just out- 
side the ward, have exercised much influence in local 
politics. With them, white politicians who have been 
desirous of getting the Negro vote have negotiated. 
Because there has been no able, disinterested leader, 
there has never been among the Negroes in this sec- 
tion any general movement toward political organiza- 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 281 

tion. As newcomers, for the most part immigrants 
from the South, the West Indies and Canada, have 
swarmed into the district, no systematic steps have 
been taken to inform them and interest them as to 
political affairs and to get them naturalized and regis- 
tered as voters. With regard to the attitude of the other 
race, the Irish, who, as earlier noted, hold first place 
among the racial elements in this locality, are solidly 
Democratic in their political alignment, and have 
always had such an easy time in carrying the ward as 
to feel no special inducement for attempting to pro- 
mote Negro support. The white Republican politi- 
cians have confined their attention chiefly to feather- 
ing their own individual nests. They are well aware 
that the Negro Republicans greatly outnumber the 
white ones, and that if the full potential Negro vote 
could be got out, it would easily dominate the ward's 
party organization. Though four of the nine members 
of the Republican ward committee have usually been 
Negroes, they have obediently taken their orders from 
the white boss and have probably done more to injure 
their race in a political way than to help it. 

The Negroes have failed dismally in this ward to 
realize their political opportunities. By 1905, the 
Negro males of voting age formed over 25 per cent, 
and to-day they form close to 35 per cent, of all the 
males of voting age in the ward. The white Republi- 
can males of voting age constitute a proportion of 
about 20 per cent of the total. By enterprising regis- 
tration of their own and the white Republican vote, 
and by taking advantage of factional quarrels among 
the Democrats, the Negroes could probably have 



2S2 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

obtained control of the ward and have elected members 
of their race to the Common Council and to the 
Legislature.^ But whenever the better element have 
nominated a ward committee, as a first step in this di- 
rection, the Negro members of the regular "machine" 
committee have forthwith sown seeds of dissension, 
while a certain irrepressible member of the race has 
usually insisted on putting a committee with himself 
as chairman in the field, thereby causing still further 
division, — with the result that the "machine" has 
always won. Any one who has wanted to give himself 
the appearance of some consequence has run for the 
Republican nomination for the Common Council ; and 
as the white Republican politicians have exercised 
slight supervision over the candidates, some of them 
have necessarily been nominated. With few excep- 
tions, these Negro nominees have been so completely 
lacking in qualification that they have not obtained 
even the more intelligent Negro vote, let alone that 
of the white element. Likewise most of the Negroes 
nominated for the Legislature have been egregiously 
unfitted for such public trust. Nor has enough effort 
been made to unite the white and the Negro Repub- 
lican voters by selecting one of the two legislative 
nominees from each race. As regards the election of 
an alderman, prior to the recent adoption of the 
present city charter Ward 18 was combined with 
Ward 21 as the 10th aldermanic district, and the elec- 
tions were always very closely contested. It would not 

' This and the following reference to the Common Council of 
course apply to the period prior to 1909, the year in which that 
body was abolished by the adoption of the new charter. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 283 

have been impossible for the Negroes to have secured 
the balance of power in this district and thus to have 
forced either the selection of one of their own number 
or some compensating political recognition. 

In 1890, prior to the city's redistricting and while 
this section was mostly included in former Ward 20, 
it happened that a stray individual of the Negro race 
was given a place in the Common Council by the 
Democrats.^ In 1896, another Negro was chosen to 
the Governor's Council, but only through a misunder- 
standing which had its elements of humor. Many 
voters, not aware of this candidate's racial identity and 
seeing in his name, Isaac B. Allen, that of some good 
old Yankee family, complimented him with their 
ballots, — with an outcome mutually surprising, and 
on one side highly pleasurable. Except for these two 
windfalls, however, the Negroes have as yet failed to 
elect any of their race to public positions from this 
district where they are to-day most numerous. 

So much for the political count against the Negro 
people. What now of the evidence in their favor.? 

First of all, the Negro has an inborn predilection for 
politics. Its boundless opportunity for talking and 
speechifying gratifies his volubility and provides an 
outlet which vies with the religious for his emotional 
eloquence. Its schemings, concealments, reckonings 
with chances, and suggestion of deep-laid plot, stir 
his imaginative nature. Its air of consequence in- 
flates him, and is to some extent a solace for his 
humiliated position in the community. Its numberless 

1 This man was Paul C. Brooks, to whom previous footnote 
leference was made in chapter in. 



284 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

conferences, committees, and conventions, appeal to 
his sociable instincts. This quality of sociability, more- 
over, combined with the Negro's disposition toward 
lasting forms of association, affords a good basis for 
political development. The spontaneous social sense, 
with which the Negro appears to be endowed in high 
potential degree, is in fact the most potent animating 
force of political endeavor and achievement. With 
this sense cultivated and educated, the race will find 
itself possessed of a powerful asset in the promotion of 
its welfare by political means. 

With respect now to such actual progress as has al- 
ready been accomplished, the most obvious political 
gain the Negroes have registered, and one which is by all 
means of primary and fundamental importance, is that 
of their mere increase in numbers. In Boston proper, 
as has already been stated, the growth has been from 
2348 in 1865 to 12,500 to-day; while in the Greater 
Boston district, during the same period, it has been 
from 3495 to 23,000. Concurrently, the number of 
Negro males of voting age has increased in Boston 
from approximately 900 to 4750; and in the metro- 
politan district from 1500 to 8750. As to the propor- 
tion of those who actually go to the polls and vote, it 
may be said that this appears to be not far below the 
corresponding proportion in the case of the white 
population, and that in a similar way it varies greatly 
from time to time and in accordance with the occasion. 
Though the proportion of Negroes in the total popula- 
tion is now only slightly larger than was the case in 
1865, it nevertheless holds true that the great increase 
in the actual number of Negro inhabitants and poten- 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 285 

tial Negro voters has been of much political advantage 
to this race. Their numbers have caused them to stand 
out conspicuously as a distinct group in the commun- 
ity, which must be reckoned with politically, as well as 
otherwise. Thotigh in the past, as has been previously 
emphasized, this leverage has not in any large measure 
been brought to bear directly, it is nevertheless true 
that indirectly the Negroes have had the outstanding 
fact of their numbers to thank for the major part of 
such political recognition as they have received. In 
other words, had it not been for the substantial size of 
Boston's Negro colony, very few members of this ele- 
ment of the community would have been given public 
positions, no matter how friendly the attitude of the 
other race. Mere numbers may thus be considered a 
foundation for the future effectiveness of the Negro 
people as a distinct political group. 

Qualitative gain has accompanied quantitative. The 
second basic element of the advance which the Negroes 
have made has been that pertaining to their compe- 
tency for performing the functions of citizenship and 
for taking part in political matters. Though as has 
been said, the majority of the Negro immigrants to 
Boston during recent years have been of an inferior 
grade in many respects, yet so far as relates to educa- 
tion they have been better equipped than those who 
came before. With this better education they have 
developed, through the Boston environment in gen- 
eral, but more particularly through the medium of the 
many local organizations among their own people, a 
higher degree of what may be called practical or ap- 
plied intelligence. The rising generation has had the 



286 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

further advantage of Boston's public schools. As the 
boys grow to voting age, they are far better qualified 
to vote competently, and with an appreciation of the 
best interests of both their own race and the commu- 
nity at large, than has been the case with preceding 
generations of Southern birth and rearing. The mani- 
fold opportunities which Boston affords have stim- 
ulated natural capacity and developed an increasing 
number of capable individuals among the Negro 
people. This has meant, in the present context, a 
deeply grounded movement toward two essential and 
closely interrelated results: on the one hand, the 
ability of the Negroes to appreciate, and in political 
ways to further, their own special interests, has been 
constantly growing; at the same time their qualifica- 
tion for acquitting themselves creditably of their civic 
duties and their political responsibility toward the 
community at large, has been continually enhanced. 

A specific part of the improvement which has taken 
place in the latter respect is the decrease of political 
venality. Reference has already been made to the 
recourse politicians of the other race have had to the 
money appeal in enlisting Negro support. Thus has 
been held out the temptation. When the ignorance of 
the great mass of Negroes, their poverty, and the lowly 
place to which they are relegated in the community are 
taken into account, is it to be wondered at that to some 
extent this temptation may have been invited, and 
that to a much greater extent it should have been 
yielded to.'^ The willingness of large numbers of 
Negroes to part with their vote for a substantial con- 
sideration has in fact become proverbial. But there is 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 287 

little doubt, first, that in the matter of this short- 
coming the Negro has been made the butt of much 
semi-humorous exaggeration, and second, that with 
improving education, growing intelligence, and gen- 
eral progress, the prevalence of such venality has 
greatly diminished. To-day, in Boston, Negro voters 
are probably on the whole no more mercenary than the 
lower gradations of white voters, — with whom only, 
of course, as in a measure approximating the eco- 
nomic and general conditions of life of the Negro peo- 
ple, a comparison of any fairness is possible. This is by 
no means giving the Negroes an entirely clean bill of 
character, but it is relieving them from an unde- 
served excess of stigma. A well-known and highly 
respected political leader of the other race, who for 
many years has had an exceptional opportunity to 
observe the Negro on the political side, puts the situa- 
tion thus: — 

I do not think that the Negro vote is any more purchas- 
able than any other kind of vote of the same degree of intelH- 
gence. We have in Cambridge many very respectable colored 
people who vote at every election just as intelligently and 
conscientiously as any o^ our voters; — on the other hand, we 
do have colored men who are in politics for what money they 
can get out of it, — just as we have men of other races, in- 
cluding many of the Anglo-Saxon origin, who are in politics 
for the same mercenary purpose. My experience has been 
that many of the more ignorant colored people are apt to 
view with suspicion a man of their own race, like my dear 
friend, Mr. , for instance, who is a college graduate and 

of the very highest character and integrity. Instead of taking 
such men for leaders they are apt to give their confidence 
and support to men of less education and very much less re- 
liability. It is easy to see how these inferior leaders, who 
themselves are actuated solely by mercenary motives, give 



288 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the impression to the casual observer that the whole Negro 
vote is purchasable. The same hasty judgment might be 
passed upon many other classes of our voters. If the individ- 
ual Negro voter, like the average member of our trade unions, 
would only do a little more thinking for himself and look to 
men of ability and character as leaders, he would soon rid 
himself of the unenviable reputation which he now bears. 

With higher standards of political honesty are com- 
ing also fuller understanding of, and more active inter- 
est in, the principles and measures of good government. 
Particularly striking evidence that such is the case was 
afforded in the autumn of 1909, when the campaign for 
a new city charter was being waged. Many of the 
leading Negroes were at that time invited to attend a 
special meeting for the discussion and furtherance of 
the so-called Plan 2, which, in intention at least, was 
the reform plan, as opposed to Plan 1, which was 
regarded as that of the self-interested politicians. 
Both schemes involved the abolition of the Common 
Council, thereby incidentally putting an end to the 
representation which the Negroes had long enjoyed on 
that body. Plan 1, however, proposed that the 
majority of the members of a single chamber city 
council should be chosen by wards. This held out to 
the Negroes the possibility that sooner or later they 
might elect one of their own number as a councilman 
from Ward 18, where their proportion of the voters is, 
as already stated, steadily increasing; and the prob- 
ability that in several wards they could barter their 
support for appointments and jobs. Plan 2, on the 
contrary, by proposing a small council of nine members 
only, chosen by the city at large, made it highly improb- 
able that any Negro candidate, unless he should be a 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 289 

man of very remarkable ability combined with promi- 
nence, could be elected thereto; while at the same time 
it reduced to a minimum the possible gain open to the 
Negroes by trading their votes. At the meeting re- 
ferred to, the Negro leaders were nevertheless urged 
to support the latter plan, on the ground that it would 
tend to do away with the regime of dubious ward poli- 
tics, in which the Negroes were at the mercy of politi- 
cians and got the least in return for what they gave, 
and to substitute a new order of things under which, 
with the better element of citizens in control, the 
members of this race would be able to ally themselves 
with the forces of clean government and would stand a 
better chance of having their actual deserts recog- 
nized, by appointments and otherwise. Before the 
meeting came to an end, those present, both Demo- 
crats and Republicans, had almost unanimously in- 
dorsed this view of the situation; and when, not long 
afterwards, the two plans were submitted to the city 
electorate for decision, more than a third of the Negro 
voters appear to have supported Plan 2, which was 
adopted by the narrow majority of 3894. Surely this 
was a practical demonstration of the fact that the 
Negro is disposed to help in pushing forward the in- 
trenchments of civic righteousness, and is coming to 
realize that in the long run his own higher interests are 
thereby best promoted. 

Beyond and largely in consequence of the Negro 
people's increase in number and their improvement in 
point of citizenship, there is also discernible among 
them some progress along lines of political organiza- 
tion and leadership. The headway in this direction 



290 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

has not yet become marked, being still of a rather rudi- 
mentary and preliminary character. But nevertheless 
it is real. Though it is true that for immediate purposes 
the Negroes appear to have been more effectively mar- 
shaled in old Ward 9 in the West End, and for a time 
in present Ward 11 in the same section, than they are 
to-day in any part of the Greater Boston district, it is 
also a fact that now a much larger number and propor- 
tion of the race have had some personal contact with 
political organization than was the case in the earlier 
period. The participation in party activity of the 
Negro rank and file, as compared with the dictation of 
the old group of leaders who in former days largely 
managed the affairs of their people, is increasing, and 
this means wider political experience and a more intel- 
ligent conception of civic matters. There are four 
Negroes, for example, on the Republican committee of 
Ward 18, two on the committees of Wards 10 and 11, 
one on that of Ward 12, half a dozen on similar com- 
mittees in Cambridge, and a few more in Chelsea, 
Everett, and other suburbs. Inasmuch as these vari- 
ous ward groups compose the inclusive city committee 
of the party, the Negroes are thus appreciably repre- 
sented in the direction of Republican city politics. Till 
very recently one of their number was messenger and 
general factotum at the headquarters of the Republi- 
can State Committee, in which capacity he exercised 
considerable discretion as to the minor affairs of that 
body.^ Almost always there are Negro delegates at 
Republican city, county, and state conventions, and, 

* Julius Goddard. He now occupies a position at the State 
House. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 291 

among the spectators, men of that race are much in 
evidence. 

The many and various Negro societies are inci- 
dentally providing a training in methods of organiza- 
tion which later will surely be turned to political 
account. There are, besides, six or eight specifically 
political clubs among the members of this race in 
Greater Boston, which, though with one exception 
they have not as yet accomplished a great deal in imme- 
diate results, are tending still further to develop the 
ability to combine for political ends. One — the excep- 
tion referred to — has in addition already succeeded 
in making itself an important factor in the politics of 
its locality. This is the Young Men's Republican 
Club of Ward 10, which has maintained its existence 
for nearly twenty years, with a retention of the same 
officers and a continuity of purpose which are, for the 
Negroes, rather remarkable. The present secretary, 
for instance, has occupied that position for thirteen 
years or more, while the president has been reelected 
for seven or eight consecutive terms. This club has 
organized and united the Negro vote in that ward to a 
larger extent than has been accomplished in any other 
section. The petty factionalism, which as already 
described has been so flagrantly in evidence in Ward 
18, has in Ward 10 been reduced to a minimum. The 
Negro candidates whom the club used to recommend 
for the Common Council were usually indorsed by the 
white Republican politicians. Previous allusion has 
been made to the rise of a sagacious Negro "boss" in 
this ward. The results obtained have been due largely 
to the exertions of this man and several of his lieuten- 



292 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ants. Without reference to personalities, this fact may 
be pointed to as showing what some degree of leader- 
ship among the Negroes can bring about. 

Even in Ward 18 signs of improvement with respect 
to both leadership and organization have begun to 
appear in the last few years. The principal candidate 
for open and accredited recognition as the political 
leader of his people in that quarter is a young man who, 
besides having a pleasant personality, good education, 
leVel-headedness, and marked capacity for concilia- 
tion, also gives evidence of having a genuine interest 
in the welfare of his race. He belongs to all the leading 
Negro organizations and takes a prominent part in the 
affairs of the Negro community. He has of late done a 
good deal in the way of registering and solidifying the 
Negro vote in that locality. Because he has stood out 
for clean politics, he has usually encountered the hos- 
tility of the "machine's" ward committee, together 
with that of a club which this committee fosters. The 
fact that, notwithstanding the opposition from these 
sources, he has several times been nominated for the 
Legislature, is testimony not only to his own personal 
hold upon the members of his race, but also to the will- 
ingness of the latter to rally around a leader of the 
better type.* 

One of the most striking and important elements in 
the Negro's political advance is a manifest growth of 
that self-reliant attitude as a racial group, to the 

* The candidate for leadership here referred to is Joshua A. Craw- 
ford. His earnestness and natural ability are shown by the fact that 
he recently applied himself to a law course at the Y.M.C.A. Evening 
School, and subsequently passed the state examination for admis- 
sion to practice as a lawyer. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 293 

fundamental need for which attention has already been 
called. Historically, the rise of the spirit of inde- 
pendence, as previously related, dates from the pro- 
test against the Republican party's withdrawal from 
its programme of Southern Reconstruction and its 
failure to uphold the Negro's constitutional rights in 
the former slave states. In recent years, not only in 
Boston but throughout the country, the expression of 
this spirit has reached its maximum strength in the 
censure of certain acts and policies of the Roosevelt 
and Taft administrations. The discharge by President 
Roosevelt in 1904, on evidence that is still subject to 
question, of part of the 25th United States Infantry,^ 
a Negro regiment, for the alleged " shooting- up " of 
the town of Brownsville, Texas, was the event which 
brought on this ill feeling. Taft, who as Secretary of 
War carried out the obnoxious Brownsville order, was 
blamed along with his chief. Roosevelt was con- 
demned also on account of his alleged policy of sacri- 
ficing the interests of the Negroes in the South for the 
sake of conciliating the Southern whites. In Boston, 
the protest against Roosevelt's acts was started by 
Editor Trotter in the "Guardian," and in other parts 
of the country it was initiated by Negroes who hold 
the same general attitude that he does on race matters. 
But the attack was soon joined in by members of the 
race not usually allied with the agitators. The hostile 
sentiment aroused by this affair has in fact penetrated, 
and in greater or lesser degree affected, the Negro 
population of the entire country. 

^ Specifically, Companies B, C, and D, forming a battalion of 
the regiment. 



294 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

In the spring of 1908 this hostility focused itself in op- 
position to Taf t's nomination for the Presidency, on the 
ground that he was Roosevelt's candidate and would 
carry out the latter's policies. A mass meeting held at 
Faneuil Hall adopted condemnatory resolutions, which 
in their catalogue of grievances quoted Taft's alleged 
remark that the Negro people were "political children, 
not having the mental stature of manhood." The atti- 
tude of the Negroes in Massachusetts proved in some 
localities a considerable factor in the election to the 
State Republican Convention of delegates unpledged 
to any particular presidential candidate. At this con- 
vention, the Negro contingent made a strong effort to 
elect as an alternate delegate to the party's national 
convention one of their own number who had been 
emphatic in his criticism of Roosevelt. This candidate 
actually received 340 votes, as against 35 for the pro- 
Taft nominee of the same race; but with the Negroes 
thus divided, neither of the two was successful. When 
the national convention assembled, a large proportion 
of the Negro delegates who presented themselves were 
opposed to Taft's nomination, but most of these were 
shut out by "steam-roller" methods and contesting 
pro-Taft delegates admitted in their stead. After the 
latter's nomination. Trotter and many of the agitators 
in other parts of the country went to the extreme of 
advising the Negroes to vote for Bryan, the Democratic 
nominee. To the great mass of the Negroes, however, 
this, of course, appeared like jumping from the frying- 
pan into the fire; and even in Ohio, which, on account 
of the championship of the discharged Negro soldiers 
by Senator Foraker, was the storm center of the oppo- 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 295 

sition to Taft, all but a small minority of the Negroes 
nevertheless voted for him. After he became President 
his alleged failure to make full restitution for the 
Brownsville "outrage," and his carrying even further 
than Roosevelt the policy of Southern conciliation, — 
as shown particularly by his announced purpose not to 
appoint Negroes to office in localities where whites 
objected, — were bitterly assailed.^ 

So strong is the influence of tradition in the Negro's 
party allegiance, however, and so unpromising any 
alternative political alignment which has thus far 
presented itself, that the actual proportion of this race 
in Boston who in national elections vote otherwise than 
as Republicans, is slight, while the proportion of those 
who regularly vote otherwise, even in local and state 
contests, is not large. But the percentage of those who 
on occasion vote for independent and Democratic can- 
didates in city, county, and state elections, has steadily 
increased to formidable size. A substantial Negro vote 
was given to the "People's" candidate for mayor in 
1905,^ while fully half this element of the population 
east its ballots for the man who was elected district 
attorney on a "citizen's" label in 1905, and as a "non- 
partisan" and "Independence League" nominee in 
1907.^ The first steps to organize a dependable Negro 
Democratic vote in Boston city politics were taken in 
1895, with the formation of a Ward 11 Democratic 

1 This in spite of his high appointment of W. H. Lewis (to be 
mentioned), and his bestowal of a number of other ofBces upon 
Negroes in the North. The objectors rejoined that they could not be 
silenced by these "sops." 

^ Henry S. Dewey. 

» John B. Moran. 



296 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Club. In 1901, a similar club was formed among the 
Negroes in Ward 18, and a transient proselytizing cam- 
paign undertaken in the interest of the Democratic 
nominee for the mayoralty.^ In 1905, a goodly number 
of Negro votes went to the same party's candidate for 
the same place, largely because of a speech com- 
mendatory of the race which he had made in Con- 
gress.^ The latter after his election made several 
Negro appointments, which went far to secure him still 
further favor among this element when he repeated his 
candidature in 1907. But that year the great majority 
of the Negroes were working hard for the Republican 
nominee,^ and did what they had never done before 
by raising among themselves a contribution for the 
local Republican campaign fund. The subsequent 
failure, however, of the oflScial whom they thus helped 
to put into office, to reward them with appointments or 
in any other substantial way, led to much disaffection 
among them, not only with the mayor himself but with 
the Republican city organization. Consequently, in 
1909 a large Negro vote contributed to the election of 
the present incumbent of the mayoralty — the same 
man whom they had supported in 1905 — when he 
again entered the arena and defeated the candidate 
nominated by the reform element,^ in one of the hard- 
est fought contests of many years. In state issues, the 
largest Negro vote cast for a Democratic candidate 
was that of the autumn of 1910, when from a fourth to 

^ Patrick A. Collins. 

2 Reference is had here to John F. Fitzgerald, who occupies the 
mayor's chair at the present time. 
' The late George A. Hibbard. 
* The reform nominee was James J. Storrow. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 297 

a third of the Negroes of Boston voted for the present 
governor,^ the reason given for their action being their 
desire to register effective protest, particularly against 
the alleged unfriendly influence of Roosevelt and 
Senator Lodge in Massachusetts politics, and in a more 
general way against recent Republican lukewarmness 
toward the Negro race. 

In the foregoing instances the Negro Democratic 
vote, though it counted substantially in the results, 
was not decisive. There has been one case, however, 
where the vote of this element did play a crucial part. 
In 1908, the Republican who was appointed district 
attorney to fill an unexpired term removed a Negro 
from a clerkship in that department.^ Somewhat later, 
in trying a case, he inadvertently made a remark which 
was interpreted as reflecting discreditably upon the 
character of the Negro people. These two acts aroused 
widespread hostility to him among the Negroes, and 
when the following year he became a candidate for 
election to the same office, a majority of the Negro 
voters supported his Democratic opponent, who was 
successful.^ As the latter's majority, however, was 
only 3211, it is probable that if the Negroes had not 
voted for him the Republican incumbent would have 
been returned. 

No doubt a secondary motive which has influenced 
many of the Negroes to support Democratic or other 
non-Republican candidates or measures, and one 

^ Eugene N. Foss. 

2 The official who made this removal was Arthur D. Hill; the 
Negro clerk James G. Wolff, to whose appointment later reference 
is made. 

^ Joseph C. Pelletier. 



298 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

which by reason of its practical character tends to 
become constantly more potent, is to be found in the 
bid, in the appealing form of appointments, which the 
Democrats and various temporary political aggrega- 
tions have made for the Negro's vote, conjoined with 
the understandable willingness on the part of the 
Negroes themselves to partake of such substantial 
favors. As a matter of fact, most of the appointments 
of Negroes to city positions of late have been made by 
the Democrats, who thus appear to be resorting to this 
method of persuasion in somewhat larger measure than 
the Republicans. But after all is said, whenever any 
considerable percentage of the Negro rank and file 
have turned their ballots against that party to vhich 
they are indebted for the franchise itself, they have 
been impelled to this radical action by what they take 
to be some form of recreancy with regard to their 
fundamental rights and their higher interests. And 
as has appeared, they have in fact succeeded in making 
increasingly effective use of this means of protest and 
self -protection.^ 

^ The most recent development in this general connection has 
been that growing out of the advent of the Progressive party. On 
the one hand, the already mentioned hostility to Roosevelt, and 
more immediately the action of the Progressives in excluding from 
their convention at Chicago two Negro delegations from South- 
ern States, together with this party's announced purpose of keep- 
ing the Southern Negro in a distinctly subordinate place in their 
ranks, — these elements have disposed the great majority of the 
Negro people adversely. On the other hand, the declared intention 
of the Progressives not to discriminate against the Negro in the 
North has brought some accessions from this race in the Northern 
States. In Boston a State Progressive Club has been organized 
among the Negroes. It is too early as yet, however, to predict 
whether any large gains will be made by this movement. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 299 

Probably the most concrete and convincing evidence 
of the better political standing to which, as a joint 
result of the foregoing advantageous factors, the Ne- 
groes are to-day attaining, is afforded by the marked 
increase of appointive positions held by members of 
this race. In the case of election to office, where, as 
has appeared, the Negroes have lost ground, the 
responsibility for the successful candidate's satisfac- 
tory performance of his duties rests in an indeterminate 
way upon the entire electorate involved, and the result- 
ing tendency is to exercise less care as to a candidate's 
individual qualifications. Thus the election of a given 
Negro might signify, and in fact sometimes has signi- 
fied, nothing more than personal popularity, effective 
backing, or mere luck. In the case of appointments, 
however, the responsibility for the appointee's record 
narrows down to a particular body, or still oftener to 
a single official. On this account, the individual's 
actual suitability for the place in view is somewhat 
more likely to receive proper attention. In the case 
of Negro appointments, at any rate, the peculiar 
necessity which has existed in recent years for their 
justification in the eyes of a more or less antipathetic 
public, argues special motive why the requisite merit 
should be present; while the fact that, even when the 
ability has been there, these Negro appointments 
should be made, bears witness that this race has come 
to be regarded as an element to be reckoned with in the 
body politic. 

The city positions which have been conferred upon 
Negroes, during the period since 1895, include, in 
Boston proper, one as deputy health commissioner, 



300 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

three as deputy tax collectors, two as deputy sealers of 
weights and measures, one clerkship, and a number of 
lesser places, such as those of messengers, janitors, ele- 
vator attendants, and workmen. In Cambridge, the 
range of Negro appointees has comprised a member of 
the Highway Commission, a member of the Board of 
Licenses, an assistant sealer of weights and measures, an 
inspector in the health department, a district physi- 
cian, a clerk, and a scattering of smaller positions. The 
other suburbs furnish a few similar cases. ^ 

Among state appointments recently awarded to 
members of this race, one of the most important has 
been that of Charles W. M. Williams, who in 1906 was 
made clerk of the juvenile court established in that 
year. This appointee who, as already incidentally 
mentioned, had previously served on the Common 

^ Details of the foregoing appointments are as follows : In Boston 
proper, William L. Reed was in 1900 appointed deputy tax collector, 
and filled this position for two years. Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall 
succeeded him, and served for four years, till he resigned to take up 
the practice of law in Washington, D.C. Julius B. Goddard and 
Joseph Hendricks were deputy sealers of weights and measures in 
1900 and 1901. Edward Everett Brown was deputy health com- 
missioner in 1907, and is now a deputy tax collector. Stewart Hoyt 
was appointed a clerk in the tax collector's office in 1906, and still 
retains this position, being regarded as one of the most efficient 
employees in that department. 

In Cambridge the most important appointments have been those 
of Clement G. Morgan as a member of the Highway Commission; 
the Rev. Henry Duckery as a member of the Board of Public Li- 
censes; Emery Morris as assistant sealer of weights and measures, 
which position he still occupies; Dr. W. C. Lane as district city 
physician and as inspector of milk and vinegar; and Arthur Jewell 
as a clerk in the Wire and Lamps Department, where he has made 
an exceptional record of good service. 

In Melrose, a Negro dentist is one of the teeth examiners in con- 
nection with the public schools. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 301 

Council, has performed his duties with exceptional 
fidelity; and in obligingness, politeness, and good cheer, 
sets an example which many public oflScials of the other 
race might with advantage follow. The state positions 
also include, beside minor places, those of a clerk in the 
district attorney's office, a public administrator, a 
member of the Board of Veterinary Physicians, and 
seven messengers and clerks in various departments of 
the State House, Of the latter, the so-called messen- 
gers perform duties which as a matter of fact entitle 
them practically to the rank of clerks. William L. 
Reed, to whose earlier service in the Legislature refer- 
ence has been made, stands out especially by reason of 
his ability as messenger in the office of the governor and 
Council, which position he has filled since 1902. The 
holder of this post must have exceptional tact. He 
must receive courteously all persons who call to see the 
governor, lieutenant-governor, and members of the 
Council, and must frequently reconcile some of them, 
politely and without offense, to going away with their 
errand unsatisfied. In point of courtesy which is alto- 
gether free from obsequiousness, the present incumbent 
leaves nothing to be desired. He is well educated and 
endowed with attractive personality, natural refine- 
ment, and a high degree of the moral qualities of de- 
pendability, accuracy, and constancy of purpose, in 
which generally the Negroes are lacking. His quali- 
fications fit him for public service of a responsible 
order. ^ 

* With reference to the other state appointments beside those of 
Williams and Reed, names and dates are as follows: James G.Wolff, a 
son of James H. Wolff to whose noteworthy part in affairs there has 



302 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Outside the field of the civil service, only two federal 
appointments have come to the Negroes since 1895, 
but these two have been very important. Both of 
them have been conferred upon the same man, William 
H. Lewis, previous references to whom will be recalled. 
In 1907, Lewis was made Assistant United States Dis- 
trict Attorney, at Boston, and in that capacity was 
placed at the head of the Naturalization Bureau for 
New England. The fact that one of this race should 
thus be put in charge of the naturalization of aliens is 
surely suggestive of considerable progress on the part 
of the Negro people in the way of becoming an inner 
element of the community. In 1911, he was appointed 
an Assistant United States Attorney-General at Wash- 
ington; which was the highest political position ever 
bestowed upon a member of his race,^ This appoint- 

been previous allusion, was inl907madeaclerk in the ofBce of the dis- 
trict attorney. The resentment aroused over his removal by the suc- 
ceeding incumbent of that office has been mentioned. William J.Wil- 
liams, already alluded to in a footnote as having been elected an 
alderman in Chelsea, is one of five public administrators in Boston 
proper, where he has his law office. Dr. Henry Lewis, of Chelsea, 
was made a member of the Board of Veterinary Physicians in 1903. 
Alexander Robinson was appointed messenger in the attorney- 
general's office at the State House in 1895; John W. Schenck, messen- 
ger in the treasurer's office in 1898; Clarence J. Smith, clerk in the 
office of the clerk of the House of Representatives in 1900; Julian 
Stubbs, messenger in the office of the secretary of state (the position 
held by Lewis Hayden and later by Sergeant Carney) in 1908. Two 
women appointees during recent years are Miss Eva Lewis, as clerk 
in the office of the secretary of state, and Miss Ruth Woods, as 
clerk in the Bureau of Labor. 

* This appointment aroused much protest from Southern and 
anti-Negro sources, but the President and Attorney-General stood 
firmly by it. By virtue of his position, Mr. Lewis took precedence at 
formjii functions over many high officials of the other race. An epi- 
sode was the unsuccessful attempt to exclude him from the national 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 303 

ment was thus not only a remarkable tribute to the 
appointee's individual ability, but from a representa- 
tive and therefore far more significant point of view, 
it was a signal recognition of the standing to which 
the Negro people have risen in the political life of the 
nation. 

The most conclusive proof of all of the Negro's 
growing qualification for efiicient public service is 
found in the automatic, race-regardless operation of the 
civil service. The number of Negroes holding ap- 
pointments in this field has steadily increased. To-day 
there are 2 official stenographers at the court-house; 2 
clerks, an assistant weigher and 3 laborers in the cus- 
tom house; a superintendent of a sub-station, 48 
clerks, 7 letter-carriers, and 10 laborers in the post- 
ofiice of the Boston postal district : — making a total 
of 72 Negro occupants of civil-service posts. ^ These 
individuals won their places in equal competition with 
members of the other race, and to retain them they 
must, day in and day out, do work at least equal in 
quality to that of their white associates. Not a few of 
them have done better work, and have gained promo- 
tion or special recognition by reason of superior ability 
at their tasks. In the Boston post-office, for instance, 
the postmaster's personal clerk, whose duties call for 
exceptional trustworthiness and efficiency, is a young 
Negro, Joseph W. Houston, who was born in that city 
and educated in its schools. In the custom-house, 

lawyers' association. With the incoming of the present Democratic 
administration, Mr. Lewis's occupancy of this position came to an 
end. 

* Some of these appointments were made prior to the civil service 
regime, but all are now under its regulations. 



SOi THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

William H. Batum, another young man of the same 
race and of Boston rearing, is one of eight entry clerks 
who have the special responsibility of seeing that all 
papers are made out in correct form, and that the 
immense amount of detail involved in the recording 
of merchandise is accurately carried out.^ Many other 
similar individual examples could be cited. But the 
essential and promising point is that the Negroes, when 
given an opportunity to be judged solely on their actual 
merits and upon an even plane with members of the 
other race, should have succeeded, in such substantial 
and constantly increasing numbers, in winning these 
creditable positions in the service of the Government. 
In the light of the facts which have now been set 
forth, it is possible to reach conclusions with regard to 
the essential features of the Negro's political situation 
at the present time. In the first place, it cannot be 

2 The case of Mr. Batum well illustrates the way in which many 
a young Negro succeeds, in spite of obstacles, in working his way 
upward. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1876, but hia 
parents came to Boston when he was two years old. He graduated 
from a high school in Boston in three years, and took a fourth year 
at the Cambridge High School, 6nishing with the rank of twelfth 
in his class and with special honors in certain subjects. Notwith- 
standing some manifestations of prejudice,he then completed a course 
at a business school, as a result of which he obtained a position as 
stenographer and oflBce assistant with a wholesale house, which he 
retained till the 6rm dissolved. For a year thereafter he was unable 
to secure steady employment, and had to do such odd jobs as came 
along. Eventually he obtained a place as messenger at the Museum 
of Fine Arts, which he kept for four years. Realizing by that time 
that this position offered slight chance for advancement, he prepared 
for the civil-service examination, and passed with a percentage of 
90.4, only 1.8 per cent below the leader. He received his present 
appointment in 1903. In 1909, he was enabled to buy a comfortable 
home. 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 305 

denied that, since the withdrawal of special favor from 
the Negro after the critical year 1895, this element of 
the population has in some ways lost political ground. 
It was inevitable that such should be the case, when a 
group of people which had previously stood in a pro- 
tege relation to the other race was thrown upon its own 
resources. The most conspicuous political respect in 
which the Negroes have suffered appears to have been 
in a falling-off as regards the holding of elective posi- 
tions. But this loss was in large part due, as has been 
already pointed out, to the redistricting of the city, the 
abolition of the Common Council, and the shifting of 
the Negro population to new localities; — all factors 
which can in no way be set down to the Negro's dis- 
credit. Furthermore, though on its face the fact that 
the Negro people to-day hold no elective offices sug- 
gests a reversal of their political fortunes since the 
period of public favor which followed the war; yet, after 
all, this is only one, and by no means the most vital, 
index to their political standing. The losses in point of 
such political leadership and close coherence as used to 
exist in the West End, before that old stronghold was 
broken up, have really been more serious, in that they 
strike deeper, and are in themselves not only effects, 
but causes tending toward further detriment. But even 
in the case of these underlying losses, it cannot be 
denied that they were in large measure necessarily 
incidental to the transition from the old order of 
things affecting this race. The passing away of the 
old group of Negro leaders, the sudden and continued 
influx of raw immigrants from the South, the move- 
ment of the Negro population to new districts, where 



306 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

it has required time to become adjusted and estab- 
lished, — these things especially, which have for the 
time operated to the Negro's political disadvantage, 
were essential elements in the general change which 
has taken place. In this light, their effects on the 
political side appear rather as set-backs, of a contin- 
gent and temporary nature only, than as essentially 
political losses of a permanent character. 

That such is in truth the case appears more clearly 
when account is taken of the fundamental and durable 
gains that are being made to-day, under the new 
conditions which have come into existence and which 
must serve as the basis of all substantial progress on the 
Negro's part. Judged from the point of view, first, of 
the requirements of the community at large, the great 
majority of Negro voters are to-day better educated, 
more intelligent regarding political matters, more sen- 
sitive to the higher standards of political honesty, and 
more interested in and disposed to uphold the principles 
of good government, than was the case in years past. 
The Negro's asset value as a citizen and as a political 
unit has, in short, been much enhanced. At the same 
time, the Negro people are making good strides forward 
from the point of view of their own more or less dis- 
tinct interests. In their mere quantitative increase, 
with which their political strength must of necessity be 
roughly commensurate, they have become possessed 
of a solid substructure upon which they can build. 
Growing numbers have been accompanied by fuller 
understanding of their own interests, and wider experi- 
ence in the political field. On this triple basis, the 
promising beginnings of organization and leadership, 



THE LEVERAGE OF THE BALLOT 307 

adapted to the situation as it stands to-day, are now 
being reared. As contrasted with their former political 
dependence on the whites, and their rather slavish fol- 
lowing of the Republican party, the Negroes are at pres- 
ent drawing together among themselves as a self-reliant 
racial group, and have already in considerable measure 
brought their independent political leverage to bear 
in the protection and advancement of their own collec- 
tive welfare. As the combined result of their progress 
in these several respects, they have succeeded in mak- 
ing themselves a reckonable factor in the body politic, 
and in obtaining substantial political recognition in the 
form of an increasing number of appointments to pub- 
lic positions of trust and credit. And finally, in the field 
of the civil service, they have convincingly demon- 
strated that they no longer stand in need of special 
indulgence, but are able to hold their own on a strictly 
competitive basis. 



CHAPTER IX 

ECONOMIC achievement; the solid 

FOUNDATION 

The physical, social, ethical, religious, and political 
aspects of the life of the Negro in Boston have now been 
considered. The one other large phase of his condi- 
tions of which account still remains to be taken is the 
economic. That his situation in this regard is of funda- 
mental import cannot be gainsaid. Next, at least, to 
the question of the mere physical survival of the race, 
certainly this one, which has to do with the obtaining 
of an independent livelihood, bears most vitally of all 
upon the welfare of the Negro people. The case may, 
indeed, be put still more strongly. Upon the Negro's 
capacity to earn his daily bread depends, in the long 
run, the very perpetuation of his racial stock; while 
unless his ability proves equal to providing somewhat 
more than enough to meet the minimum needs of bare 
subsistence, all hope of any real and permanent prog- 
ress on his part, in other respects, must be abandoned. 
In the absence of an economic surplus, no strong social 
order can be built up, nor can the social amenities and 
ameliorations be cultivated in any substantial measure; 
for neither the necessary respite from incessant toil nor 
the requisite material means will be present. Under 
such circumstances, also, the bitterness of the struggle 
for economic self-preservation would prevent the rise 
of altruistic ethical standards and ideals. With respect 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 309 

to religion, though each individual's most essential 
altar may be contained solely within himself, never- 
theless collective religious activity, if it is to have prac- 
tical effect, must needs be materially supported. On 
the political side, finally, any element of the popula- 
tion, which is compelled to expend its entire energy in 
the dire necessity of maintaining life, is hardly in a 
position either to acquire an adequate understanding 
of political affairs or to use the ballot and its accom- 
panying privileges to intelligent and advantageous 
purpose. In last analysis, therefore, the Negro's prog- 
ress at every point must hinge upon his economic 
well-being; and as he cannot move forward in other 
directions except upon a sound economic basis, so, 
reversely, it follows that with such a foundation he 
stands in the way of advancing all along the line. 

Such being the case, it is of the utmost importance 
that this aspect of the Negro's situation be subjected 
to the most careful scrutiny and interrogation. First, 
what is the present general industrial and economic 
level of the Negro, as compared with that of the white 
race.'' In the event that the Negro is found to be occu- 
pying a lower plane than the other race, what are the 
essential factors which account therefor; and in what 
measure do these factors consist of inherent deficiencies 
in the Negro himself, on the one hand, and of adverse 
influences from without, on the other.?* More specifi- 
cally, — is it true that, as is usually taken for granted, 
the great mass of the Negroes are engaged in the menial 
or lowest forms of labor.? If such be the fact, are there 
at the same time, however, any circumstances, arising 
out of the peculiar position of this race, which some- 



310 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

what qualify this fact's signification? Passing on to 
work of intermediate grade, what is the situation in the 
Negro's case; is he to any considerable extent forcing 
his way upward into the substantial middle class of 
occupations, which must constitute the industrial bul- 
wark of any element in the community? In general, is 
the tendency toward a contraction or an expansion of 
his industrial opportunities, as respects the number, 
grade, and variety of callings in which he is able to find 
employment? Ascending a stage higher still, to the 
professions and business proprietorships, does it appear 
that here, too, at the top of the industrial scale, where 
the qualities of initiative, independence, and responsi- 
bility come most fully into operation, the Negro is 
making any promising headway? With regard to the 
Negro population as a whole, how far are the members 
of this race taking advantage of the most important 
avenues of industrial and economic betterment which 
— though perhaps not in equal degree — lie open to 
them, as well as to other classes in the community at 
large? Are they, in particular, deriving whatever bene- 
fits accrue from participation in the labor-union move- 
ment? Are they increasing their own efficiency and 
earning power through the medium of industrial edu- 
cation? Are they establishing themselves on the solid 
rock-bottom of property ownership, thus throwing up 
powerful intrenchments against the future? Finally, 
are the Negroes displaying any capacity for, and in any 
promising degree actually putting into practice, busi- 
ness combination and cooperation, of a sort calculated 
to promote race coherence, and to apply to their own 
economic problem the axiom that in union there is 
strength? 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 311 

Section 1. Unfitness and Discrimination 
The Negro's present economic standing, relatively 
to that of the white man, appears most plainly when a 
comparison is drawn between the proportion of the 
members of each race who are found to be engaged in 
work of the lowest grade. For purposes of such a com- 
parison, certain occupations, of a character, chiefly, to 
which the term "menial" is commonly applied, may be 
regarded as at the bottom of the industrial scale. ^ Now 
while the latest available census returns showed, on the 
one hand, that only 13 per cent of the white males and 
30 per cent of the white females at work in Boston 
proper were employed in these specific occupations; 
they revealed, on the other hand, that 61 per cent of 
the Negro males and 76 per cent of the Negro females 
at work were employed in identically the same occu- 
pations.^ In other words, the proportion of Negro males 
engaged in work of the lowest grade was five times 
larger, and that of Negro females two and a half times 
larger, than the proportion of white males and females, 

^ In the case of men and boys, the occupations here referred to are 
those of bootblacks (except those having stands of their own) ; serv- 
ants and waiters; porters and helpers in stores; and laborers not 
attached to any particular industry. In the case of women and girls, 
the corresponding occupations are those of servants, laundresses 
(except those having laundries of their own) ; and others classifiable 
only as laborers of nondescript type. 

2 Inasmuch as the State Census of 1905 did not tabulate its find- 
ings according to color, and as the tabulations of the 1910 Federal 
Census, as respects occupation by color for Boston, are not as yet 
available, the Federal Census of 1900, therefore, contains the most 
recent authoritative figures upon which a detailed comparison of the 
situation of the Negroes in this regard with that of the whites may 
be based. It is from this census that the foregoing and also subse- 
quent computations are made. 



312 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

respectively, engaged in similar work. It thus becomes 
strikingly and authoritatively evident that the great 
mass of the Negroes are to-day on an industrial level 
far below that of the mass of the other race. This is the 
first outstanding and significant fact which pertains 
to the economic situation of the Negro people. 

Still further testimony to this condition of economic 
depression is afforded by a second comparison, this 
time as between the total proportions of each race 
reported as being, to use the technical phrase, "gain- 
fully employed," — or, in plain terms, at work for pay. 
In the case of the white population this proportion 
was 65 per cent for men and boys, and 24 per cent for 
women and girls; while among the Negroes the corre- 
sponding proportions were respectively 76 per cent 
and 40 per cent. That is, the proportion of men and 
boys at work was greater by 11 per cent, and that of 
women and girls by 16 per cent, in the Negro's case. 
This means simply that the degree of economic pressure 
to which the Negro people are subjected is much more 
severe than that which affects the other race. The 
high employment rate for Negro males is no doubt 
accounted for in some measure by the more urgent 
necessity for putting the boys to work as soon as they 
have completed the legal requirements of school 
attendance. The more significant figure is that pertain- 
ing to the employment of women and girls, which is 
even higher among the Negroes than among the city's 
foreign immigrants.^ That such is the fact bears wit- 
ness not only to a larger contingent of unmarried 
working- women, but also to the excessive proportion 

^ Forty per cent as compared with twenty-nine per cent. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 313 

of wives, mothers, and daughters in Negro homes who, 
by the rigor of the demand for family support, are 
forced into labor beyond their own domestic responsi- 
bilities. In the case of the white population, the great 
majority of the men who are not at work are either 
living on their incomes, or tiding along on savings until 
employment is again obtained. But with the Negroes 
the voluntary or enforced idleness of the men has to be 
offset by the labor of the women. The mass of this 
race, in short, are at present on an economic plane so 
low that the struggle for livelihood must be kept up 
incessantly. 

The two principal factors by which the foregoing 
conditions are accounted for are: — first, the industrial 
unfitness of the Negroes themselves; and second, the 
discrimination against the latter on the part of the 
other race. Of these elements, both separately and in 
their combination, it will now be profitable to take 
further note. 

Both the conditions out of which the great mass of 
Negroes in Boston have come, and those to which 
they are still subject in this city, have been adverse to 
the development of industrial efficiency. Under slavery, 
the great majority of the Negroes in the South were 
agricultural laborers, while the remainder were either 
artisans or domestic servants. Nearly all were special- 
ized and in greater or less degree skilled in their vari- 
ous occupations. But as a result of the breaking-down 
of this old order of things, consequent upon the aboli- 
tion of slavery and the ravages of war, a large number 
of the race were thrown out of their customary em- 
ployment. These Negroes soon began to betake them- 



314 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

selves to the Southern towns and cities. The cityward 
movement has gone on at a constantly increasing 
rate, and has conspicuously gained momentum in the 
last fifteen years. A majority of these Negroes who 
have gone to the cities have been forced to make their 
living as they could, and have formed a class dependent 
upon odds and ends of occupations, and leading a pre- 
carious hand-to-mouth existence. It is from this class 
that a major part of the Southern immigrants to Bos- 
ton have always come; while in recent years, since the 
more intelligent of the race have realized that the 
North is not all it was supposed to be, the proportion 
drawn from this element has been even larger than 
before. Increasingly, Southern Negroes possessed of 
some degree of specialized skill have chosen to remain 
in the South. Most of those who have come to Boston 
have been ignorant, deficient in practical ability, and 
almost entirely lacking in any training which would 
fit them for work above the level of the least responsible 
unskilled labor and menial service. The number of 
those capable of taking their place in the intermediate 
industrial ranks, as artisans and skilled workmen, has 
been small. Only a very few have had the experience 
or understanding to qualify them for commercial em- 
ployment or for any sort of independent professional 
or business initiative. With reference to industrial 
education, through the medium of which the members 
of this race might qualify themselves for work of higher 
grade, more will be said at a later point. Here it is suf- 
ficient to observe that in Boston there is no special 
provision for the Negroes in this regard; and that while 
most of the facilities along this line are open to them 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 315 

along with other elements of the community, nearly 
all of such facilities call for some capacity, at least a 
completed grammar-school course, and sufficient free- 
dom from the immediate necessity of earning a liveli- 
hood to be able to apply one's self for a substantial 
period to the instruction offered. The very industrial 
and educational unpreparedness of the Negroes, how- 
ever, combined with the constant economic pressure to 
which they are peculiarly subject, puts them at a se- 
vere disadvantage in availing themselves of such gen- 
eral opportunities for vocational betterment. 

But the industrial unfitness of the Negroes goes 
deeper than lack of training. Owing in part to the 
effects of the conditions from which they have come, 
and in part to their own inherent traits of nature, the 
mass of the race are deficient in some of the qualities 
which are essential to the satisfactory filling of even a 
common-labor position ; and in nearly all of the quali- 
ties which are indispensable for advancement into the 
higher grades. That such is the fact will appear more 
clearly in the light of further specification. 

The majority of Negroes are characterized by an 
easy-going manner of life which borders closely on 
indolence. This is not to say that out-and-out laziness 
and idleness are typical Negro failings ; — the common 
belief to this effect being, in the writer's opinion, erro- 
neous. That such is the case is at least the suggestion, 
if not the necessary implication, of the fact, already 
noted, that the proportion of Negroes at work is much 
above that of the white population. Notwithstanding 
the dire necessity for labor on the part of the former, 
this necessity could to some extent be escaped by 



316 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

resort to charity; whereas such dependence or pauper- 
ism, as has also been remarked, is not excessively in 
evidence. Confirmed Negro loafers, on the street 
corners, about saloons, or in the Common, appear to be 
rare. Usually, Negroes who seem to be merely loafing 
in loquacious groups, prove on inquiry to be waiters, or 
other employees of irregular hours, off duty. The easy- 
goingness of the members of this race is rather a dis- 
taste for monotonous and long-continued labor and a 
preference for varied and intermittent employment. 
It is a common thing for Negroes to give up good posi- 
tions because they find the hours too exacting or the 
routine too dull to suit them. They are also prone to 
quit working when they have earned enough money to 
tide them along a little while, and to return to work 
only when their money is gone. Odd-jobbing, maybe 
requiring strenuous exertion for the time being but 
with frequent intervals of leisure, is much more to their 
liking than tasks that go on without relaxation. While 
the intermittent laborer is somewhat above the merely 
casual one, he is of course on a lower character plane 
than the workman of regular and steady application. 
To a considerable extent the notion is prevalent 
among the Negroes that hard manual labor, and 
especially such as is dirty also, savors of servility and 
degradation. This misconception is a natural product 
of the reaction from the old order, when hard and 
begriming work was the lot of the slave, while ease and 
good clothes pertained to the privileged freeman. So 
it results that to-day, even though the wages and 
prospects of advancement may be better in occupations 
which necessitate rough labor, a great many Negroes 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 317 

nevertheless prefer employment which, though really 
inferior, enables them to put on an appearance of gen- 
tility and circumstance. This is in fact one of the rea- 
sons why comparatively few of this race are found 
among the common laborers who perform the heavy, 
dirty tasks in manufacturing, and why, on the other 
hand, so many are counted in the ranks of waiters, 
bell-boys, Pullman porters, and other brass-buttoned 
and impressive functionaries. Such highly ornamental 
positions as that of a handsome black giant, till 
recently stationed in front of one of Boston's leading 
confectionery shops, and who, helmeted and furred, 
looked the Emperor of all the Africas, while performing 
the unimperial duty of opening and closing carriage 
doors for patrons, are after the very heart of many of 
this race. 

Closely related to the easy-going quality of the ma- 
jority of Negroes and their aversion for steady work, 
are their traits of irresponsibility, instability, and un- 
trustworthiness. The propensity which they show to 
leave a position whenever they feel like it illustrates 
all three of these shortcomings. The chances are 
against a Negro's continuing to be satisfied long in 
any given place. Lack of permanency of purpose 
with respect to occupation is accompanied by failure 
to realize and assume the responsibilities of punctual- 
ity, regularity, and conscientious performance of 
duties; — a failure which practically amounts to un- 
trustworthiness. The Negroes are unreliable, further- 
more, in that dependence cannot be placed upon their 
statements. Though not addicted to outright and pre- 
meditated lying, they do not appreciate the vital 



318 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

importance of sticking closely to the actual facts and 
of abiding strictly by their word. The fertile imagina- 
tion which is part of their nature often gets the better 
of them. The mass of this race are wanting also in 
point of thoroughness, pertinacity, and providence. 
They are inclined to rest content with doing just well 
enough to meet superficial and immediate require- 
ments. The painstakingness and exactness, which will 
not permit a good workman to rest content till .he has 
done the work before him as well as it can be done, are 
much rarer among the Negroes than they are among 
the whites, even in comparable industrial strata. The 
Negroes also become discouraged more easily when 
they encounter obstacles in their work, or when it does 
not bring them higher wages and advancement as 
quickly as they wish. They are lacking in the strength 
of purpose which would enable them to stick to their 
tasks till they accomplished the desired results by 
sheer determination. Improvidence is a characteristic 
which may be inferred from these others. As a rule the 
Negroes do not take the future sufiiciently into 
account, and so constantly exhaust their resources and 
fail to provide a surplus to assist them in bettering 
their economic conditions. 

There are other deficiencies in the Negro make-up 
whose hampering effect is more marked in connection 
with employment of higher grade and with independ- 
ent industrial enterprise. The lack of independence and 
initiative, first of all, shows itself in the failure of the 
great majority of Negroes to seek occupation outside 
and above the beaten path. Because of the fact that 
the mass of the race have alwaj^s been in menial and 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 319 

low-grade labor, most Negroes are wont to assume that 
they can obtain only employment of that character. 
At their tasks, moreover, they seldom display the 
quality of originality, rare among any class, but sure 
wherever found to carry its possessor forward. These 
incapacities also keep the Negro people from striking 
out more largely for themselves along professional and 
business lines, while their deficient ability for coopera- 
tion is an additional obstacle to the organizing of com- 
panies, and to the undertaking of any other kind of 
industrial or commercial combination. 

The foregoing statements regarding these adverse 
elements in the Negro character are based neither upon 
a priori reasoning as to what ought logically to be so, 
nor upon common report; but are the expression of 
convictions gradually forced in upon the writer as a 
joint result of his own personal experience in trying to 
find employment for Negroes, his inquiry among em- 
ployers, and his general observation. Among the con- 
siderable number of Negroes who have sought his 
assistance in obtaining work, there have been few, 
indeed, — not more than one in ten, — who were 
qualified for any form of industry above the grade of 
menial service or the commonest sort of labor. A large 
proportion of those for whom work was secured kept 
their positions but a short time, either because they 
did not fill them satisfactorily or because they them- 
selves became discontented. Some even failed to pre- 
sent themselves at the places where employment had 
been promised, while the great majority were ex- 
tremely remiss in keeping appointments. Few dis- 
played initiative, resourcefulness, and persistence. The 



320 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

testimony of most employers who have had experience 
with Negroes is to the same effect. While admitting 
that there are many individuals of this race who have 
exceptional qualifications, they declare that as a class 
they are unreliable and incompetent. Though the bad 
traits which have been indicated are most glaringly 
exhibited by Negroes in the lower industrial grades, 
they are also clearly in evidence at points further up 
in the economic scale. Moreover, while these failings 
are all too common in the inferior industrial strata of 
the other race, especially among domestic servants, 
they are prevalent to an appreciably larger extent and 
degree in the case of the Negroes. 

Besides the industrial unfitness of the Negroes 
themselves, the second general factor which accounts 
for their economic backwardness is, as previously 
stated, the discrimination against them on the part of 
the whites. To make a statement at once comprehen- 
sive and accurate, respecting the manner and degree in 
which this discrimination affects the Negroes industri- 
ally, is very difficult. It cannot be said that there is a 
point in the industrial scale above which Negroes are 
barred; for, as will presently appear, members of this 
race are found in every industrial gradation from com- 
mon labor to substantial business and professional 
proprietorship. Nor can it even be said that those 
occupations of the various grades which are accessible 
to Negroes are but a few in number; for, as will also 
appear, Negroes are likewise to be found in the great 
majority of all the occupations which the census 
enumerates. 

Nevertheless, the discrimination in question is very 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 321 

real, and its effects are very plain. It shows itself first 
in a prejudice against Negro applicants for employ- 
ment. Except in the case of the menial occupations in 
which Negroes are most numerously engaged, it is 
much harder for a Negro to get employment than it is 
for a white person. Even in the case of these menial 
occupations, moreover, it is difficult for a Negro to 
obtain work if the particular employer to whom he 
applies has not been accustomed to employing Ne- 
groes. As a rule this prejudice increases in strength as 
the grade of work ascends. Speaking very broadly, 
one may say that in low-grade work a Negro finds it 
twice as hard to obtain employment; in work of inter- 
mediary grade, such as the trades and lesser clerical 
lines, from ten to fifty times harder; and in work of high 
grade, such as that of bank clerks, salaried officials 
of business houses, and the like, a hundred times harder 
than is the case with applicants of the other race; and 
that furthermore there are some occupations from 
which Negroes are practically shut out. With respect, 
secondly, to advancement after employment is once 
secured, the Negro is likewise, though in lesser degree, 
the object of prejudice. In order to gain promotion 
he must as a rule do work which is not only equal in 
quality to that of white employees of the same sort, 
but better. Even so, his promotion is at best slow and 
uncertain. The prospects of advancement diminish as 
the grade of work ascends, and after a certain point 
they sink to zero. 

Examples of how the discrimination in question 
operates may be had in the case of several forms of 
employment from which Negroes are practically 



322 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

excluded. The occupations of salesmen and sales- 
women in department stores, conductors and motor- 
men on street-cars, and trainmen, conductors, firemen, 
and engineers on railway trains, fall within this cate- 
gory. In smaller stores and shops in Boston there are a 
few Negro salesmen and saleswomen, while there is at 
least one case of a Negro in the superior position of 
buyer in a large establishment. The reason given for 
the non-employment of members of this race in depart- 
ment stores is that both the white employees and the 
white patrons would object. But as against this asser- 
tion it may be submitted that, in the first place, the 
white employees are not organized in unions, through 
which they could voice any such collective protest effec- 
tively; that in the absence of union organization, and 
in view of the abundant outside supply of labor of this 
sort upon which the stores may draw, they would not 
be likely to carry their resistance so far as to lose their 
positions; and finally, that in the smaller stores above 
mentioned neither the white employees nor the patrons 
have registered any objections of pronounced charac- 
ter. It would appear, therefore, that in this case the 
eventual and real responsibility must rest upon the em- 
ployers, even though the latter may in good faith hold 
an opinion to the contrary. In the case of railway 
train employees, immediate responsibility rests chiefly 
upon the labor unions, which in practice, if not in their 
public utterances, bar Negroes. But as respects con- 
ductors, at least, the public enters in as a potential 
factor, in that it is very questionable whether white 
passengers and Negro conductors would get on satis- 
factorily. In the case of conductors on street-cars. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 323 

inasmuch as there have been no unions till very 
recently, the probable attitude of white passengers is 
the decisive element. When account is taken of the 
frequent squabbles between passengers and conductors 
over fares, transfers, stops, and what-not, as well as the 
occasions which arise for conductors to eject passen- 
gers because of disorder or intoxication, it is easy to 
foresee that serious trouble might ensue if Negro con- 
ductors were employed. This would not be true, how- 
ever, with regard to motormen, and as they, too, were 
not unionized till within a short time, the employers 
again appear to have been mainly accountable for the 
non-employment of Negroes in this capacity. 

The three parties to the industrial prejudice against 
the Negro are thus seen to be employers, white em- 
ployees, — especially some of those who are organized 
in unions, — and the public. But wherever the imme- 
diate responsibility may rest, it is, of course, in every 
case the employers who are ultimately and in the most 
tangible way accountable. 

This very discrimination to which the Negro is sub- 
ject, however, is in major part the product not of any 
inherent hostility to him on the part of the other race, 
but of the actual industrial unfitness of the Negro 
himself. When a Negro applies for a position, he labors 
under a heavy burden to prove his ability to fill that 
position satisfactorily; or, in other words, to show that 
he is an exception to the general rule applying to his 
race. Either the particular employer's own previous 
experience with Negroes, or his knowledge of the 
experience of other employers, causes him to assume, 
in the absence of the strongest evidence to the con- 



S24 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

trary, that any given Negro applicant is in all likeli- 
hood incompetent. The employer, therefore, sees no 
sufficient reason for going into the qualifications of each 
individual. He simply adopts as the safest general 
policy that of refusing employment to all Negroes. On 
the surface this appears to be a drawing of the color 
line. But, in fact, it is primarily a rough-and-ready 
application of the competency test. The situation is 
similar with respect to the advancement of Negroes 
after they are employed. Though the prejudice 
becomes less pronounced, for the reason that each 
Negro has more of a chance to demonstrate his own 
personal ability, the burden of proof is still against 
him and he must fight his way against great odds. 

In recent years the Negroes have lost ground in some 
of the menial occupations where their hold has sup- 
posedly been strongest. In this respect they have suf- 
fered especially from competition on the part of some 
of the immigrant groups from southern Europe and 
elsewhere. Many hotels and restaurants, for instance, 
have replaced Negro waiters by white ones of various 
nationalities. Negro barbers with a white patronage 
have practically disappeared, having been displaced 
largely by Italians. Negro coachmen are not nearly so 
much in evidence as they were twenty-five years ago. 
Even Negro bootblacks have declined markedly in 
number, ousted by the enterprising Greeks. Several 
years ago Japanese bell-boys were substituted for 
Negro bell-boys at the American House. The manager 
of this hotel stated that he had found the Negro boys 
unreliable, given to petty thievery, lazy, and deficient 
in personal cleanliness; and that this was why he was 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 325 

making the change. In domestic service, also, Negro 
girls are usually a second choice to those of Swedish, 
German, and other nationalities. The majority of the 
Negroes themselves say that it is the increase of pre- 
judice which is blamable for these losses. But the 
underlying explanation is that even in such menial 
occupations Negroes have been found wanting when 
weighed in the scale with other races. 

If by some miracle the present industrial prejudice 
against the Negroes could be made to disappear over- 
night, no doubt the immediate effect would be that the 
latter would suddenly rise many degrees in the indus- 
trial scale. But they would not retain their higher 
position long. As their actual industrial unfitness made 
itself evident anew, discrimination based on this unfit- 
ness would again come into being, would operate as it 
operates to-day, and soon the mass of this race would 
drop back, — not, it is true, to the same point as pre- 
viously, for the temporary absence of prejudice would 
have enabled many to demonstrate individual ability* 
while fuller opportunity would have enhanced the ca- 
pacity of many more, — but certainly to a point not so 
very far above that which they had occupied before- 
That is to say, the present industrial standing of the 
Negro people is roughly commensurate with their 
present actual industrial worth. 

But while thus, on the one hand, the Negro's unfit- 
ness is the underlying reason for the discrimination 
against him, it is also true, on the other hand, that this 
very discrimination itself operates to perpetuate his 
unfitness, by limiting his industrial opportunities. If 
he is practically barred from certain occupations, con- 



326 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

fronted with great difficulty in entering others, and in 
general relegated to those of inferior grade, the result 
must inevitably be that his prospects for eliciting and 
cultivating any latent industrial capacity he may 
possess are minimized. He is thus caught within an 
entangling mesh of cause and effect: finding himself 
through his own shortcomings, in last analysis, brought 
hard up against an adverse discriminatory force from 
without; which in turn tends to keep him from rising 
above his present inferior place in the industrial scale, 
or to push him still further down. Such is the crux of 
the economic problem with which the Negro is to-day 
face to face. 

Section 2. Getting a Foothold 

When now one turns from the negative to the posi- 
tive aspect of this situation, and seeks to find whether 
the problem which has been pointed out is in process of 
solution, by any distinct economic advance on the 
Negro's part, what are the facts which here align them- 
selves? 

A comparison of the conditions of to-day with those 
of the past, as the latter have already been indicated, 
will show whether, on the whole, the general move- 
ment which has taken place in this regard has been of a 
backward or forward trend. In the beginning, the 
Negroes in Boston were slaves, and as such had no in- 
dependent industrial status whatever. Gradually, and 
owing largely to the endeavor and industry of the 
Negroes themselves, slavery was undermined and by 
1780 eradicated. Its abolition marked the starting- 
point of the semi-independent economic history of this 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 327 

element of the population. The status of slave was 
succeeded, however, by that of traditional servant, 
which in the case of the great majority of the Negroes 
in the Boston community lasted until after the general 
emancipation of the race. Then the full economic 
liberty and responsibility of the Negro people began. 
Though even before that a few Negroes had entered 
the professions and become business proprietors in a 
small way, yet, as between this handful at the top and 
the rank and file still engaged in menial labor at the 
bottom, the proportion who had made their way into 
the manual and clerical intermediate occupations re- 
mained slight for fifteen or twenty years following the 
war. The change which has subsequently come about, 
however, is shown by the fact that to-day approxi- 
mately thirty-five per cent, or more than a third of 
the city's Negro inhabitants, are found to be in occu- 
pations above the lowest or menial plane, and mostly 
in those belonging to the intermediate gradation.^ 
Thus it becomes manifest that a great improvement 
has taken place; and one which, moreover, does not 
have to do only with a small minority composed of 
exceptional individuals, but with a very large propor- 
tion of the entire Negro population. 

The progress in this respect which has been accom- 
plished during the recent period, appears when the 
latest available census findings are compared with 
those of ten years previous. In order to appreciate the 
real significance of the figures involved in this com- 

^ This figure is simply the complement of that given at the begin- 
ning of the chapter with reference to the proportion of the Negroes 
employed in occupations of lowest grade. 



328 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

parison, however, it is necessary to take account of the 
fact that during the decade in question, that of 1890- 
1900, the Negro colony of Boston proper grew from 
8125 to 11,591, — an increase of 3466, or over 42 per 
cent. Inasmuch, too, as the deaths during the decade 
exceeded the births, and as there was much emigration, 
the total immigration of Negroes must have been con- 
siderably in excess of the net gain in numbers; and in 
fact probably amounted to at least 50 per cent of the 
Negro population at the beginning of the decade. The 
great mass of the individuals who made up this immi- 
grant tide were unfitted for anything above common 
and menial labor. Under these conditions it might 
reasonably have been expected that, while the abso- 
lute number of Negroes in occupations of higher grade 
would have increased somewhat by the decade's close, 
the ratio of such to the total of Negroes at work would 
have decreased in no small measure. Indeed, it might 
have been regarded as not unlikely that this influx of 
ignorant blacks would have intensified the industrial pre- 
judice to such a degree, that the proportion of the Ne- 
groes in occupations of higher grade would have declined 
by as much as the Negro population had increased. 

But here is what actually took place: In 1890, the 
proportion of Negro males in Boston proper engaged in 
occupations above those of servants, waiters, porters, 
helpers, and nondescript laborers was 43 per cent, and 
the proportion of Negro females in occupations above 
the grade of servants and laundresses was 21 per cent. 
In 1900, the corresponding proportions were 40 per 
cent and 25 per cent. In the case of men there had 
been only a slight decline of 3 per cent, and in the case 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 329 

of women there had been a net gain of 4 per cent. 
Viewed in the light of the foregoing analysis of the 
situation, these figures show that in the course of the 
decade the Negroes made enough headway in moving 
up the industrial scale to offset fully the depressing 
effect of the flood of raw immigrants from the South. 
The actual advance which was accomplished stands 
out still more clearly when expressed in terms of num- 
bers instead of in percentages. Whereas, in 1890, the 
number of Negroes of both sexes in occupations above 
the level of those cited as the lowest was 1674, in 1900 
it was 2326, — an increase of 652. This means that 
by the end of the decade the Negro people had suc- 
ceeded in establishing that many more individual 
advance guards — or, perhaps better said, scouts — 
to assist in pushing its industrial intrenchments still 
further forward. 

A second form of evidence of the Negro's economic 
progress is afforded by the increase in the number and 
variety of occupations in which members of this race 
are found. In the latest census to which reference has 
been made, not only were substantial numbers of Ne- 
groes listed in each of the five general industrial classi- 
fications, — agriculture, the professions, domestic and 
personal service, trade and transportation, manufac- 
turing and mechanical pursuits, — but also, in the case 
of the 123 secondary classifications into which the en- 
tire working male population of Boston was distrib- 
uted, Negroes were reported in 96; while of the 57 
similar classifications for women, members of this race 
were reported in 34.^ Though it is impossible to enter 

* The occupations of males in which no Negroes were reported 



330 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

into an item-by-item comparison of these findings with 
those of preceding censuses, for the reason that, pre- 
viously, occupation statistics by color were not given 
in such detail for Boston, it is nevertheless practically 
certain, in the light of general information and observa- 
tion, that the industrial distribution of the Negroes is 
wider and more varied to-day than it ever has been 
before.^ 

Still another index to the improvement in the 
Negro's economic conditions is had in the decrease of 

were: farmers, planters, agricultural overseers; nurses; street rail- 
way employees; broom- and brush-makers; cabinet-makers; car- 
pet-factory operatives; clock- and watch-makers and repairers; 
copper- workers; dressmakers; electroplaters; engravers; furniture- 
manufactory employees; gas-works employees; glass-workers; 
hat- and cap-makers; model- and pattern-makers; paper- and 
pulp-mill operatives; rope- and cordage-manufactory employees; 
rubber-factory employees; sail-, awning-, and tent-makers; steam- 
boiler-makers; sugar-makers; textile-mill operatives; tool- and 
cutlery-makers; trunk- and leather-case manufactory employees; 
woolen-mill operatives. 

The occupations of females from which Negroes were absent were: 
agriculture; hucksters and peddlers; packers and shippers; bakers; 
broom- and brush-makers; button-makers; carpet-factory opera- 
tives; confectioners; cotton-mill operatives; glove-makers; hosiery- 
and knitting-mill operatives; iron- and steel-workers; lace- and 
embroidery-workers; manufacturers and officials, photographers, 
rope- and cordage-manufactory operatives, rubber-factory opera- 
tives; sewing-machine operatives; shirt-, collar-, and cuff-makers; 
textile-mill operatives; tobacco- and cigar-factory operatives; 
upholsterers. 

It will be seen that in many cases these occupations are so slightly 
different from those in which Negroes were found, and are withal of 
such a wide variety, as in general to carry little suggestion of the 
exclusion of members of this race on account of prejudice. In other 
words, the list appears to be on the whole of a merely casual nature, 
and at another time might be very differently made up. 

1 Further discussion of this point is deferred till later in the 
present chapter. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 331 

the percentage of Negro women at work. While the 
proportion of men employed remained at the same 
point — 76 per cent — during the decade 1890-1900, 
that of women declined from 40 per cent to 36 per 
cent. This reduction in the proportion of wives, 
mothers, and girls who are compelled to labor outside 
the home implies a lessened economic stress upon 
Negro families, owing largely, no doubt, to more fruit- 
ful industry on the part of the men. In positive terms, 
this means a better economic situation. 

Conclusive as are the foregoing evidences of indus- 
trial advance, however, they are still of a rather general 
character and significance. The progress to which they 
bear witness will be much more fully and vividly un- 
derstood when the particular kinds and grades of work 
in which the Negroes are engaged are taken up specifi- 
cally, and the concrete facts thus scrutinized at close 
range. To this end, while aiming so far as possible to 
summon one's first-hand observation of the more 
humanly interesting features, and to avoid forbidding 
statistics, it will at the same time prove advisable to 
have recourse again to the findings of the census, in 
order to insure the desirable and essential element of 
comprehensiveness. But inasmuch as the most 
important consideration in the present inquiry is that 
of the rise of Negroes into superior occupations, the 
purpose in view will not be met by the census returns as 
they stand tabulated in the Government volumes; the 
five general classifications there given, and most of the 
secondary ones, including not only employees of differ- 
ent grades, but proprietors as well. In the light of one's 
own acquaintance with the facts, however, it is possible 



332 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

to estimate with approximate accuracy the number of 
proprietors in most of the cases, — as, for instance, 
that of "barbers," — where they are comprised under 
the same heading with employees, and thus to sepa- 
rate the proprietors from the rest. Even with this 
separation effected, however, the further question 
arises as to how to classify the various employees. 
Grouping them merely according to variety or charac- 
ter of occupation gives no idea of their rank. A possi- 
ble basis for grading would be the prevailing wage or 
salary of each occupation. But even if the practical 
impossibility of obtaining this information in accurate 
form and on a sufficiently extensive scale could be over- 
come, it would still remain true that stipend is not by 
any means always commensurate with an occupation's 
grade. The amount of special preparation or ability 
required in the case of any given work, and the degree 
of intelligence combined with skill or expertness for 
which its performance calls, constitute together an- 
other test which strikes somewhat nearer the mark. 
But probably the best criterion of all is that of the gen- 
eral esteem in the community at large, which attaches 
to the various occupations in question. This is a 
standard which, besides taking account in a composite 
way of the factors that have been suggested, includes 
also the additional psychological element, which, 
though of somewhat intangible character and effect, 
is none the less real. For purposes of the present in- 
quiry, at any rate, which is economic-social in a broad 
sense rather than narrowly and strictly industrial, the 
test of public esteem appears to be the most satisfac- 
tory one in determining the rank of different kinds of 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 333 

work. On this basis it is possible to arrange the occu- 
pations in which Negroes are found, as these are 
reported by the census, into three general gradation 
groups; consisting, respectively, of those which are 
lowest in the industrial scale, those which occupy an 
intermediate position, and those which take rank at 
the top. 

The first group, thus made up, includes the em- 
ployees of those occupations to which specific reference 
has already been made as the least esteemed, and of a 
few others which are on substantially the same plane 
in this respect. The composition of this group, in 1900, 
was as follows : ^ — 

FIRST GENERAL INDUSTRIAL GROUP 

Menial and Common Labor Occupations — Employees 
Boston Proper 

MEN 

Bootblacks (employees) 27 

Newsboys 4 

Errand and office boys, and messengers ... 48 

Hostlers 61 

Agricultural laborers 11 

Steam-railway employees 34 

Laborers (not attached to any particular industry) . 665 

Porters and helpers in stores, etc 404 

Servants and waiters 1676 

Total 2930 

65 per cent of all men at work. 

* It should, of course, be borne in mind that as the above figures 
are from the Census of 1900, the number of Negroes in the majority 
of the occupations given would be appreciably larger to-day; and 
that it is only as Indicating relative proportions, in an approximate 
way, that these figures, which as previously stated are in this partic- 
iilar connection the most recent ones available, are to be understood. 



334 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

WOMEN 

Laborers (not attached to any particular industry) . 25 

Laundresses (employees) 492 

Servants 1222 

Total 1739 

76 per cent of all women at work. 

Most of the Negroes employed as bootblacks are 
boys who are getting a start in this way, and who later 
go into other occupations, or, in the case of a small pro- 
portion, become proprietors of bootblacking stands. 
The same is true of the newsboys, who are a common 
sight on streets situated in or near Negro districts. 
The errand and oflSce boys and messengers occupy a 
somewhat higher position, from the point of view of 
possibilities of advancement. Not infrequently these 
boys gradually work their way up into semi-clerical 
and clerical positions, and a few eventually become 
business proprietors or enter the professions. Some of 
the messengers are full-grown men, who, while get- 
ting more in wages than the boys, tend, on the other 
hand, to remain permanently in positions of this sort. 
A small number of messengers of higher grade, con- 
nected with Government offices and banks, are in- 
cluded in the next industrial group. 

A little above the foregoing occupations, in point of 
earnings, come those of hostlers, and agricultural and 
railway laborers. Of the hostlers, the majority are to 
be found in private stables. The agricultural laborers 
are employed by nurseries, truck farms, or large es- 
tates. The railway employees are mostly coal shovel- 
ers, polishers, and the like, in the shops, or common 
laborers on the tracks. The subdivision made up of 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 335 

laborers not attached to any particular industry com- 
prises a wide variety of more or less nondescript occu- 
pations. A great many, though probably not the 
majority, of those who fall under this heading, can be 
described by no more definite term than "odd- job- 
bers" or "men-of -any -work." Mainly from inability 
to obtain permanent employment, but partly also 
from preference for intermittent exertion, they make 
shift with whatever they can get to do — washing 
windows, cutting lawns, shoveling snow, helping 
unload coal, or what-not. A corresponding class is, of 
course, to be found among the other race, but the fact 
that it is not nearly so large as in the case of the 
Negroes further witnesses to the lower economic 
status of the latter. Because of the uncertainty in the 
occurrence and duration of their employment, the 
earnings of these odd-jobbers are likewise extremely 
uncertain and variable. Another contingent in this 
subdivision consists of elevator tenders. A large num- 
ber of Negro men and boys are employed in running 
elevators in business buildings, apartment houses, and 
hotels. Their earnings are increased by tips, especially 
in the holiday season. Still another quota is made up 
of street and construction laborers, of whom there are 
several score on the rolls of the city and those of 
private contractors. The members of this subdivision 
who earn the most are the longshoremen, who load 
and unload cargoes of all sorts along the water front. 
Some of them do not have assured steady work, but 
are taken on intermittently at certain docks where no 
regular force is kept, or elsewhere as extra hands. By 
circulating about, however, these men usually keep 



336 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

busy most of the time. The majority of those who are 
regularly employed receive $12 a week. For overtime 
work they get 30 cents and for Sunday work 45 cents 
an hour. Thus many of them manage to bring their 
weekly earnings up to $15 or $20. 

The subdivision "porters and helpers" also comprises 
many more particular occupations. It takes in all sorts 
of attendants and factotums in stores and other busi- 
ness places. Though there is little dignity attaching to 
such employment, — except when decorated with 
brass buttons ! — and though the wages which it 
yields are low, still not a few of these humble lend-a- 
hands come gradually to occupy positions of trust and 
good pay, thus rising into the industrial group next 
higher up. In this subdivision are also included the 
porters about the railway depots and the elevated 
railway stations, and the meat-carriers in the markets. 
These meat-carriers earn as much or more than the 
longshoremen. Their usual wage is $12 a week, but 
after regular hours many of them work at loading and 
unloading cars, and because special skill is required 
in the handling of meat, the pay per hour is higher 
than that of miscellaneous dock labor. Occasionally 
a very rapid worker makes as much as $5 in a single 
night, while earnings of $20 a week are not rare. 

By far the largest subdivision in this first industrial 
group is that of servants and waiters. Between twenty- 
five and thirty hotels, restaurants, clubs, and apartment 
houses, in Boston proper, employ Negroes as waiters. 
This is the case in nine leading hotels, while several of 
the same grade have Negro waiters in some of their 
dining-rooms, and white waiters in the others. The 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 337 

wages paid range from $22.50 to $33 a month, that of 
most usual occurrence being $25, plus meals in working 
hours. Captains and head waiters receive more, the 
former from $30 to $40 and the latter usually about 
$75. In addition to the regular wages, however, there 
are the tips. In nineteen hotels and restaurants which 
the writer investigated, the lowest reported monthly 
income from tips was $12, while the majority of waiters 
took in about $25 a month, thus bringing their gross 
earnings up to $50 a month, or approximately $11.50 a 
week. Frequently the yield from tips is much larger. 
One waiter reported $185 during a lucky month. This 
is very exceptional, but cases of $50 a month are not 
uncommon, especially in so-called bohemian cafes. 
The gross earnings of captains is usually about the 
same as that of ordinary waiters, the higher wage 
being offset by a smaller amount in tips, owing to the 
less direct contact with patrons. For the same reason 
head waiters are not tipped to any large extent, except 
in one or two of the best hotels and several resorts of 
the sporting element. In these places the amount thus 
received depends mainly on the head waiter's popu- 
larity, but on the average is about $50 a month, 
making the gross earnings $125 a month, or close to 
$29 a week. An especially coveted position under the 
heading of servants is that of Pullman porter. The 
usual wage is $25 a month. The income from tips, 
though very variable, and ranging from next to nothing 
on poor "runs" to $100 a month and even more on the 
best ones, averages about $50. Thus the combined 
income is $75 a month, or something over $17 a week. 
Of the women included in the first industrial group 



338 . THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

now under consideration, the majority of those set 
down as laborers are scrubwomen and the like. The 
servants consist for the most part of general house- 
work girls, nursemaids, ladies' maids, and cooks. The 
cooks get the best pay, sometimes making as much as 
$10 a week. Also included among the servants are a 
considerable number of helpers and attendants in 
manicure and hairdressing parlors, and millinery, 
dressmaking, and other similar establishments. These 
positions are often especially attractive because they 
have more or less of an appearance of smartness or gen- 
tility. Of the laundresses, the majority go out to work 
by the day. The usual day's wage is $1.50, plus car- 
fare. This means $4.50 a week if a woman has only 
three days taken, $7.50 or $9, if she works five or six 
days, as many do, the demand being far in excess of the 
supply. A smaller proportion of the laundresses take 
in work at their homes. These women might well be 
considered as belonging to the proprietor class, and a 
few who have home or shop laundries open to public 
patronage will be so graded. The laundresses who take 
in work, as a rule make more than those who go out by 
the day. 

By way of general characterization and summary 
applying to this first large industrial group, the ex- 
amination of which in detail has now been completed, 
it should be noted that in the case of both sexes the 
specific occupations comprised are of two kinds: 
common labor, such as that of longshoremen; and 
menial work, such as that of servants and waiters. In 
the case of common labor, the suggestion of inferiority 
is less, and attaches rather to the labor alone than to 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 339 

the laborer also. The menial occupations, however, 
in which a much larger number of Negroes are found, 
are customarily looked upon as not only inferior in 
themselves, but as stamping the persons employed in 
them with inferiority. The underlying explanation of 
this fact is doubtless to be had in the intimately physi- 
cal nature of the service rendered, such as serving food 
and blacking boots. The way of referring to the em- 
ployees in such kinds of work as "boys," and of ad- 
dressing them by their first names, suggests their lack 
of dignity. A particular reason which partly accounts 
for the low esteem in which some of these occupations 
are held is that they are subject to the practice of 
"tipping." Whenever a tip is offered and taken, not 
only the giver's respect for the taker, but also the 
taker's respect for himself, are impaired, and the in- 
feriority of the latter's position is not only implied, 
but, in tendency at least, produced. The better ele- 
ment of the Negroes are conscious of the deteriorating 
influence to which so many of their race are thus con- 
tinually subjected. Tipping is not the sole element, 
however, in the disregard which attaches to labor of 
this sort, as is shown by the fact that domestic ser- 
vants, who usually are not tipped at all, are neverthe- 
less the most distinctly menial of all. The conditions 
which surround most forms of menial employment are, 
furthermore, not such as to bring out the best traits of 
character. Waiters and bell-boys, especially, are con- 
stant witnesses to over-display, extravagance, vul- 
garity, heavy drinking, and immorality; — with more 
or less lowering of their own standards as an almost 
inevitable result. In so far, therefore, as the foregoing 



340 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

unfavorable features are concerned, the fact that so 
large a proportion of the Negroes are employed at 
menial labor is undoubtedly one of the most serious 
obstacles in the way of general progress by this race. 
But, on the other hand, it would be a mistake to 
attach any necessary stigma to work of this kind. Any 
task done honestly and well is creditable, and the 
worthiness of one's employment really depends upon 
the character of one's own fulfillment of it. Some of the 
better educated and more sensitive Negroes are begin- 
ning to urge their people to keep out of menial service. 
That is well enough, provided employment of higher 
grade is procurable. But if the choice rests between 
menial occupation, and enforced idleness or dependence, 
which is often the case, the former is certainly to be 
preferred. So long as large numbers of the race must 
earn their livelihood in this field, they should strive to 
enhance the dignity of their employment by self- 
respecting and efficient performance of their duties. 
Under actual existing conditions, moreover, the case 
is far from being one-sidedly against work of this char- 
acter. There are some very substantial considerations, 
in fact, which must be set down to its credit. The first 
is, that the earnings in some of these occupations, as 
has already appeared, reach a point far above those of 
common labor, and for that matter considerably above 
those of some of the semi-skilled manual and clerical 
lines of employment which are usually regarded as 
superior. Positions as Pullman porters and as head 
waiters, which not infrequently yield an income of $125 
a month, are by no means to be despised. In point of 
skill required, moreover, the work of a good hotel 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 341 

waiter is something of an accomplishment; and an 
efficient head waiter, who sees to it that his men are 
properly drilled, marshaled, and kept at attention to 
their duties, is veritably — to borrow a term from the 
economists — a "captain of industry." 

Earnings above those of common labor imply better 
living conditions, better education for the children, and 
enhanced social worth. As will be shown when owner- 
ship of property is considered, many of the Negroes in 
menial positions in Boston have by thrift and saving 
set aside enough to buy a home, and provide their fami- 
lies with the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. 
Some have invested in additional property, and a few 
have accumulated snug little fortunes. The majority 
of these men and women are respected and serviceable 
members of the community. 

Any handicapped group, of course, as, for example, 
some of the foreign immigrants to whom reference has 
been made as displacing the Negroes in certain occu- 
pations, have to resort to menial employment more or 
less, at least while they are getting a foothold. In the 
case of the white population, however, it holds true 
that the great majority of persons engaged in work of 
tfiis grade are of a generally humbler standing. But 
with the Negroes this is not the case to nearly such a 
degree. On account of the difficulties experienced by 
members of this race in obtaining work of higher 
grade, it results that Negroes of every degree of ability, 
education, and standing among their own people, are 
found in menial occupations. For some this is simply 
their first employment, through which they hope to 
get a start that will enable them to move higher. And 



342 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

many do move higher. It is safe to estimate that two 
thirds of the Negroes who occupy the best positions 
to-day have at some time in their life worked as 
waiters or as menials of some other sort. A second 
contingent, while remaining in menial occupations 
permanently, nevertheless rise, through saving and the 
purchase of property, to an economic level equal to 
that of workers in superior lines. Others, students 
especially, take this readiest way of supporting them- 
selves till they can enter upon their chosen work. Still 
others, who have through various exigencies lost 
better positions or whose abilities are of a sort — as 
literary or artistic — which is not sufficiently remuner- 
ative, take up menial work as either a temporary or 
permanent mode of making both ends meet. An aspir- 
ing verse-writer known to the writer earned his daily 
bread for a time by working as an elevator boy. The 
minister of a suburban church is employed during the 
week as a porter in a city store. These instances are 
typical of many more which could be cited, and which, 
as already suggested, are far more common among the 
Negro people than they are among any other element 
of the population. 

It is evident, therefore, in the light of the foregoing 
concrete facts, that there is much in connection with 
the occupations in this first industrial group which 
bears witness not to industrial inferiority, but to very 
substantial economic progress. These occupations 
cannot justly be dismissed as "lowest," except in a 
purely comparative and underogative sense. An 
unmodified comparison, moreover, between the per- 
centage of the Negroes engaged in work of this sort 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 343 

with the percentage of the whites in work of the same 
kind, does not constitute a true and adequate measure- 
ment of the relative economic levels of the two races; 
the reason being that in the case of the Negroes the pro- 
portion who in their living conditions have risen above 
their employment is so much larger than it is among 
the other race. In short, the Negro people, in consider- 
able degree making a virtue of their necessity, have 
turned occupations reckoned as lowly into the means 
of substantial economic intrenchment. 

The second industrial group is made up of employees 
in two general kinds of occupations, the one higher 
grade manual, the other clerical, which from the point 
of view of their esteem in the community belong in 
approximately the same intermediate gradation. 
This group was in 1900 constituted as follows: — 

SECOND GENERAL INDUSTRIAL GROUP 

Higher Grade Manual and Clerical Work — Employees 
Boston Proper 

MEN 

Barbers 81 

Bartenders 16 

Stewards 29 

Janitors and sextons 319 

Watchmen and policemen 24 

Boatmen, fishermen, and sailors 22 

Soldiers, sailors, and marines (U.S.) 16 

Teamsters 150 

Packers and shippers 27 

Iron and steel, wire, brass, tin, brick, and leather 
workers ; quarry men ; meat-packing, electric-light, and 

brewery employees; telegraph and telephone linemen 36 

Marble- and stonecutters 8 



344 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Blacksmiths and wheelwrights 9 

Machinists 7 

Boot- and shoemakers and harness-makers ... 2 
Carpenters, coopers, painters, paperhangers, plasterers, 

and roofers 75 

Plumbers, gas- and steamfitters 9 

Upholsterers 9 

Tobacco-workers 6 

Piano-makers 3 

Masons 30 

Butchers 6 

Bakers 5 

Tailors 11 

Photographers 2 

Gold- and silver-workers 3 

Engineers and firemen (stationary) 53 

Engineers and surveyors 2 

Electricians 4 

Bookbinders 2 

Printers 19 

Foremen 3 

Stenographers and typewriters 7 

Messengers (high grade) 16 

Clerks and copyists 83 

Bookkeepers and accountants 4 

Architects and draughtsmen 3 

Agents and commercial travelers 26 

Salesmen 23 

OflBcials of companies 3 

Total 1153 

25.5 per cent of all men at work. 

WOMEN 

Hairdressers 5 

Stewardesses 88 

Janitors and sextons 34 

Nurses and midwives 30 

Box-makers 1 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 345 

Boot- and shoemakers 7 

Seamstresses 38 

Shirtmakers 1 

Tailoresses 9 

Dressmakers 114 

Milliners 4 

Bookbinders 1 

Printers 1 

Telephone operators 1 

Stenographers 8 

Clerks and copyists 9 

Bookkeepers 4 

Agents 5 

Saleswomen 7 

Total 367 

16 per cent of all women at work. 

This group includes a much more extensive grada- 
tion of occupations than the first one, with respect to 
skill, earnings, and public regard. Though, as above 
set down, these occupations have been arranged 
roughly in an ascending scale according to their esti- 
mation in the community, no hard-and-fast arrange- 
ment, on this or any other basis, is possible. While it 
will not be necessary to consider each occupation 
separately, still, before generalizing, some observation 
of a more specific character will prove profitable. 

At the beginning of the group, forming the transi- 
tion from the one preceding, come the semi-menial 
occupations of barbers, stewards, bartenders, janitors, 
and sextons. The barbers are employed in places pa- 
tronized exclusively by this race. There is to-day only 
one Negro shop which has a white patronage — this 
one being in the State House, where it remains as a sort 
of inheritance from earlier years. Some of the bar- 



346 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

tenders are in the Negro "clubs" to which previous 
reference has been made, while the remainder are in 
white cafes and hotels. Most of the stewards are to be 
found in white clubs; a few in hotels and restaurants. 
The janitors, who are employed mainly in apartment 
houses, business blocks, and public buildings, are as a 
class characterized by thrift and sturdy moral quali- 
ties. The position of janitor is, of course, one which 
calls for trustworthiness, industry, and practical 
ability, while the consciousness of being placed in such 
a situation of responsibility tends further to develop 
the better elements of character. Having to take care 
of property gives rise to an understanding of the value 
of property and an ambition for ownership. Probably 
the Negro janitors include a larger proportion of 
property owners than is the case with any other single 
occupation. Several of the men whose real-estate 
holdings are most substantial have this as their present 
or past vocation. 

Negro teamsters are much in evidence. Most of 
them are employed by coal companies, who testify 
that in general they are as satisfactory for such work as 
any other race, while being more desirable in point of 
good humor and humane treatment of their horses. 
Negro drivers of delivery wagons for many kinds of 
business are also a common sight. In this context, 
note may appropriately be made of an occupation in 
which no Negroes at all were reported by the Census 
of 1900, but in which to-day there must be at least a 
hundred in Greater Boston. The occupation to which 
reference is had is that of chauffeur. The rapid in- 
crease of Negroes in this calling within the last few 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 347 

years reflects considerable credit on the members of 
this race, in that the work requires not only special 
preparation, but exceptional qualifications, including 
accuracy of observation, cool-headedness, quick-wit- 
tedness, mechanical skill and ingenuity, and trust- 
worthiness of character. If Negroes are not found] 
wanting at such work after a fair competitive trial, 
their fitness for employment as motormen, railway 
trainmen, firemen, engineers, and the like, may war-/ 
rantably be taken for granted. 

From teamsters to foremen, this second group is 
composed of what may be broadly termed skilled 
manual occupations, including the trades in the nar- 
rower sense. These may be considered collectively, 
inasmuch as the conditions pertaining to them are 
similar. The multiplicity and diversity of occupations 
of this character in which Negroes are found is what 
first impresses the observer, while the considerable 
number of members of this race in certain vocations, 
especially those of carpenters and allied branches, and 
masons, stationary engineers, and printers, is particu- 
larly striking. With respect to the Negroes reported in 
the building trades, it may be said that they are as a 
rule employed among the white workmen, with whom 
they appear to be approximately on a level in point of 
efficiency. A goodly proportion of the Negroes in the 
trades are not wholly in the employee class, strictly 
speaking, but are at least semi-proprietors, owning 
their implements and working more or less as their own 
masters. Such is the case especially with many of the 
carpenters, roofers, plasterers, and paperhangers. 

The skilled manual occupations are the ones of 



348 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

chief strategic importance for the Negroes to-day, as 
constituting the most practical avenue of industrial 
advance for the rank and file of the race. They are 
mostly occupations for which the necessary training 
may be acquired not only through a school course 
of industrial education, — though, to be sure, such 
special preparation is a great advantage, — but also, 
as is usually the case, by working one's way up 
through lower grades of related work. They are also 
occupations in which the demand for satisfactory 
workmen is generally in excess of the supply, and 
with regard to which, therefore, possession of the 
requisite skill is almost certainly a passport to em- 
ployment, whatever may be the color of the appli- 
cant's skin. They command good wages. What is 
still more important, they compel recognition of and 
respect for practical ability. The conditions sur- 
rounding such work are furthermore conducive to the 
development of the qualities of responsibility, thrift, 
and definiteness of purpose, which are themselves 
both the prerequisites and the guarantees of sub- 
stantial industrial progress. 

The remaining occupations in this group, from sten- 
ographers to the end of the list, are of a clerical or 
semi-clerical character. Some of the Negroes in these 
lines of work are employed by Negro establishments, 
but such are distinctly in the minority. Besides two 
court stenographers, to whom previous reference has 
been made in connection with the civil service, there 
are several others who have won exceptional recogni- 
tion in this calling; among them a young man holding a 
position in a well-known public stenographic office, 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 349 

with white associates, who has the reputation of being 
one of the best of this vocation in the city. The mes- 
sengers listed at this point consist of those in the 
State House, post-office and custom-house, who, as 
previously stated, really perform the functions of 
clerks; and of a few others of the same grade in banks 
and business places. Several of these bank messengers 
would be promoted to full clerkships were it not for the 
alleged objection that their white associates would 
make.^ A considerable proportion of the Negro clerks 
are also to be found in city, state, and federal offices. 
The rest are scattered about here and there in business 
establishments of various sorts, which is likewise true 
of the bookkeepers, salesmen, and architects. 

In clerical employment, the proportion of Northern- 
born, or at least Northern-reared, Negroes is at its 
highest. Among this element especially, but also 
among the rest of the Negro population, work of this 
nature is at a premium. This, of course, holds true not 
only in the case of the Negroes, but also in that of the 
whites, with whom likewise clerical occupations are 
generally held in higher social esteem than manual 
ones, even though the latter be of skilled grade; the 
reason being, apparently, that clerical employment 
carries more of a suggestion of gentility. It is well and 
good that Negroes should enter these clerical occupa- 
tions to an extent warranted by the real benefits 
thereby derived. These benefits are chiefly the gain in 
self-respect resulting from the consciousness of being 

^ There are only two full-fledged Negro bank clerks in Boston: — 
Louis Pasco, at the National Shawmut Bank, and Leigh Carter, 
with N. W. Harris & Co. 



350 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

in work which is commonly regarded as superior, and 
the winning of enhanced respect from the whites 
through demonstration of assumedly superior capaci- 
ties. For a small minority of exceptionally qualified 
Negroes, moreover, clerical work affords opportunity 
for exceptional advancement and earnings. But for 
the great majority of the race the clerical field is of 
much less practical and certain value than that of 
skilled manual work. In the first place, the supply of 
labor for clerical employment, much of which — as, 
for instance, that of ordinary store clerks — requires 
no special training beyond a common-school education, 
is far in excess of the demand. This means that .the 
Negro must encounter more severe competition in 
obtaining such employment, and that in all except its 
upper grades the wages are much lower than in the case 
of manual work which calls for special skill. Of a piece 
with the superficial gentility of clerical employment, 
the prejudice against the Negro is more pronounced in 
it and the opportunity for advancement much less 
favorable. The nature and conditions of such work are 
as a rule not so likely to develop the more rugged and 
fundamental qualities of character. There is more 
temptation to squander earnings on dress, empty 
accomplishments, and the aping of "society." Unfor- 
tunately, many Negroes succumb to these tempta- 
tions. 

Considering together the higher grade manual and 
the clerical occupations now under discussion, what has 
been said regarding the men in their ranks applies 
also, in general, to the women. But there are several 
points of difference. The percentage of Negroes em- 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 351 

ployed by members of their own race is larger in the 
ease of the women; as is also the proportion of those 
who are semi-proprietors, as, for instance, many of the 
hairdressers, seamstresses, dressmakers, and milliners. 
The number of occupations of intermediate grade in 
which Negro women are found is much smaller than 
in the case of Negro men, owing largely to the fact that 
racial prejudice is more pronounced on the part of 
white women employees, thus making it more difficult 
for Negro women to gain an entrance. 

With respect to this intermediate industrial group as 
a whole, men and women combined, there are certain 
important observations to be made. The first of these 
is, that whereas the great majority of the Negroes com- 
prised in the first or lowest group, previously con- 
sidered, carry on their work either in segregated gangs, 
as in the case of hotel waiters, or under conditions 
where their contact with the other race is as between 
inferiors and superiors, a majority of those in this 
second group work side by side with white employees 
of the same kind, under circumstances of at least 
industrial equality. This fact has vital consequences. 
These individual Negroes are living arguments — the 
most convincing ones possible — against the injustice 
of an undiscriminating prejudice. Their presence and 
example are the most persuasive appeal which could be 
made for mutual amity and respect between the two 
races. Every Negro who is performing work of this 
grade is thus an asset of the utmost strategic value to 
his people. 

The general public sees or hears little of the Negroes 
who occupy such superior positions. Most of these 



352 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Negroes are not making a noise over their good for- 
tune. On the contrary, they are keeping quiet, mini- 
mizing the fact of their racial identity, and in all ways 
trying to avoid attracting to themselves an attention 
which they fear might arouse prejudice and endanger 
their employment. But the observer who goes about 
with his eyes open comes upon these individuals in 
unexpected places and in surprising numbers. The 
head milliner in one of the most fashionable of Boston's 
millinery establishments, for instance, is a Negro man, 
who not only carries on his work among white em- 
ployees, but has charge of them. One of the salesmen 
in a well-known furniture store is a Negro, who has 
been with this particular establishment for many years, 
having gradually worked up from humble employ- 
ment, in the beginning, to his present place, in which 
he is reckoned among the firm's most valuable men. 
There is nothing in the relations between his white 
fellow-salesmen and himself, or in the attitude of 
patrons, which intrudes the color line. Incidentally, 
this man attracts a considerable trade from members 
of his own race.^ Another Negro is one of the buyers in 
a leading department store, and ranks among the fore- 
most in this capacity. An especially noteworthy case is 
that of a member of this race who, starting as a bottle- 
washer, is now in charge of the laboratory of the com- 
pany that manufactures the well-known Cuticura 
remedies.^ Several score examples as striking as these 

^ The case referred to is that of William C. Lovett, in Eldridge & 
Peabody's. 

* Reference is had to Philip J. Allston, who at the writer's request 
has contributed the following brief autobiographical sketch: — 

"I was born in Edenton, North Carolina, August 12, over forty 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 353 

could be given, as well as many more which approxi- 
mate to them, but the ones which have been cited will 
serve as representative. 

Though it is true, as previously noted, that a Negro 
encounters much more difficulty in getting work than 
does a white man, yet the writer, in his own range of 

years ago, of slave parentage, my mother being the product of a 
Caucasian man. My father the result of like association from an- 
other plantation. 

"I was left in the care of my mother when only a few years old, 
my father hastily leaving for the North, and I did not see him for 
eight years. I came to Boston, July, 1871, where my mother joined 
my father. 

"Large opportunities for her children, and a desire to see her 
husband again, caused Mrs. Emily AUston, my mother, to leave her 
own home for Boston. 

"She had instructed the children in the first steps of learning. 
As a seamstress she was considered above the average slave. She 
engaged a private tutor to advance the children. I attended the 
primary and grammar schools, but left the latter before reaching 
the graduating class that I might aid in the support of the home. 
With an intense desire for educational advancement, being forced 
to make a livelihood at an early age, I immediately, upon leaving day 
school, joined the Evening English High School, which I attended 
for eight years, and the Starr King Drawing School, where I re- 
mained for five years. 

"My first position was as a helper to a janitor (a white man) of 
the National Shawmut Bank. Finding no chance here to advance 
on account of my color, I left after the first six months, to work at 
the Weeks & Potter Company, wholesale and retail druggists. Here 
as bottle-washer I remained until promoted to the laboratory of this 
concern. 

" Mr. Warren B. Potter, one of the partners of this establishment, 
took a great interest in me, and offered me the position of foreman 
in their laboratory in their new quarters on Columbus Avenue some 
thirty years ago, with the privilege of attending the Massachusetts 
College of Pharmacy. I was the only student of the colored race at 
that time. 

" The entire force of workers in the laboratory are of my race. A 
few years ago Mr. George R.White, the sole owner of the business, 
honored me by sending me to inspect the soap works which he had 



354 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

experience, has encountered very few cases of Negroes, 
who were fitted for work of the superior grade now 
under consideration, who have not been able, at least 
through diligent effort, to obtain such work. He grants 
that he has come upon many instances of persons of 
this race who appeared at first to be the victims solely 
of racial prejudice. Nearly always, however, these 
individuals have proved in fact to be lacking either in 
the requisite skill or in some essential quality of char- 
acter. Though the attitude of the majority of em- 
ployers, as has already been stated, is that of assuming 
all Negroes to be incompetent, there is a substantial 

purchased in Maiden, and I offered suggestions and drew recommen- 
dations for many improvements. The works cost one million dollars. 

"The products of the Potter Drug & Chemical Corporation are 
found in every country of the world, Cuticura being the chief labora- 
tory product. 

" I have found prejudice one of the best elements to my advance- 
ment, as I realized the great mistake made in the lack of good judg- 
ment in freeing the slaves in such an unbusinesslike and unreasonable 
way. The so-called problem to my mind is mainly with the Negro 
himself and depends on his knowing how to handle opposition and 
to grasp opportunities. One of the first duties of the Negro is to give 
this prejudice question a sane and Christianlike consideration. 

"For centuries the white man of the South despised labor for 
himself and family. Habit is a tremendous force to upset; in land the 
betterment is only the result of years of toil and cultivation. So it is 
the duty of the Negro to educate the Caucasian race to a better 
Christian cultivation and to a nobler humanitarianism. 

"If the Negro desires help from the Caucasian race, we must 
show them that we believe in their improvability in this practical 
way. The fact that the Negro has demonstrated his capacity to 
broaden in education and advance in the moral and social scale, 
together with his commercial achievements, no one knows better 
than the white friends of the Negro of the South; that Ephraim is 
not joined to his idol of ignorance, sensuality, and selfishness. 

"Then Christian character is the great force wanted by both races. 

"My personal property is assessed for $7500." 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 355 

minority of whom this does not hold true. Officials of a 
number of concerns have said to the writer: "It makes 
no difference to me whether an employee be black or 
white. The man that I want, and that is worth most 
to me, is the man who can do the best work." Though 
still relatively small, the proportion of employers who 
take this view, and who, instead of following the policy 
of refusing employment to all Negroes indiscrimi- 
nately, make it a rule to judge applicants on their 
actual merits as workmen, irrespective of race or color, 
is at the same time steadily increasing. The most con- 
vincing proofs of this, as well as the most impressive 
demonstration of the extent to which the Negro on his 
own side is forcing his way upward, are had in the fact 
that the number of Negroes employed in these occupa- 
tions of higher rank is constantly growing. As has 
already been pointed out, an increase of six hundred 
and fifty-two individuals of this race took place during 
the decade 1890-1900, in work above the menial and 
common grade. For the most part, this gain was regis- 
tered in the ranks of the specific occupations now under 
discussion, while it is in this quarter also that the 
greater variety of employment in which Negroes are 
found to-day, and of which previous note has been 
made, chiefly obtains. 

Not only the community at large, but the Negro 
people themselves, are far from realizing the actual 
progress which the latter are making in climbing up 
the industrial ladder. Among both races, one hears 
considerable talk about the alleged narrowing of the 
Negro's industrial opportunities during the recent 
period. But in the light of the facts now before the 



3S6 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

reader, the belief that such a narrowing has taken place 
does not appear to be borne out by the concrete evi- 
dence which is available. On the whole, indeed, the 
opposite has occurred. It is true, as already men- 
tioned, that in certain kinds of lower-grade employ- 
ment, such as that of waiters and domestic servants, 
the Negroes have lost ground, owing especially to the 
invasion of these fields by various foreign nationalities. 
But the very fact that the Negroes have to some 
extent been pushed out of such inferior work has prac- 
tically forced them to exert themselves more success- 
fully in getting into occupations of higher rank. As to 
the net effect of foreign immigration in this respect, it 
is a matter of common observation — to digress for the 
moment — that frequently the latest group of new- 
comers, being as a rule the most heavily handicapped 
by ignorance of the English language and otherwise, 
has to take the poorest work at the lowest wages, thus 
displacing the group just preceding; which forthwith, 
both under the spur of necessity and also with the 
advantage of its longer x\merican experience, moves up 
a peg in the industrial scale. Now there is good rea- 
son to believe that the lower ranks of the immigrant 
legions are rendering the Negroes a similar service in 
disguise; in that, while immediately ousting the latter 
from some of the less desirable forms of employment in 
which they have been most numerous, mediately, on 
the other hand, they are actually helping to boost the 
members of this race into work of better grade, where 
till recently they have been comparatively few in 
number. Certain it is, at any rate, that on this higher 
level the Negroes have experienced not a narrowing, 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 357 

but a widening, of their opportunities. Here lies their 
present chief field of industrial conquest. These man- 
ual occupations demanding a degree of skill, and these 
lines of clerical employment calling for a substantial 
measure of education and intelligence, constitute 
together, as between menial and common labor below, 
and the professions and independent business above, 
the great middle industrial group, which holds out most 
practical and ample promise to the Negro rank and 
file. 

The group next in order — the third and last — 
consists, as has just been indicated, of Negroes in the 
professions and semi-professions, and those who are 
engaged in business on their own account. Though 
of course this group includes occupations of different 
standing, and individuals of various degrees of ability, 
in the large it represents the height of the Negroes' 
industrial achievement; — namely, their rise into posi- 
tions of more or less complete proprietorship. The 
composition of this group in 1900 was as follows: — 

THIRD GENERAL INDUSTRIAL GROUP 

Professions and Business Proprietorships 
Boston Proper 

MEN 

Actors and showmen 29 

Artists and teachers of art 3 

Musicians and teachers of music 31 

Literary and scientific men 5 

Teachers in schools 4 

Clergymen 13 

Dentists 10 



358 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Physicians and surgeons 12 

Lawyers » . 12 

Bootblacks 9 

Barbers 25 

Hucksters 8 

Boot- and shoemakers .... o ... 15 

Teamsters 17 

Laundry proprietors 4 

Restaurant, saloon, boarding- and lodging-house and 

hotel keepers 47 

Livery -stable keepers 3 

Bakery proprietors 3 

Confectioners 2 

Bottlers and preservers 3 

Butchers 6 

Photographers 2 

Tailors 15 

Printers 4 

Undertakers 2 

Real-estate agents 6 

Newspaper proprietors 2 

Manufacturers and officials 7 

Bankers 1 

Merchants, retail 50 

Merchants, wholesale 3 

Total 353 

7.8 per cent of all men at work. 

WOMEN 

Actresses 18 

Artists and teachers of art 1 

Musicians and teachers of music 15 

Teachers in schools 9 

Literary and scientific women 2 

Ministers 1 

Physicians 1 

Hairdressers 5 

Laundry proprietors 12 

Milliners 2 



ECONOMIC ACmEVEMENT 359 

Dressmakers 12 

Restaurant-keepers 1 

Boarding- and lodging-house keepers 55 

Merchants 2 

Total 136 

5.9 per cent of all women at work. 

Comment on these occupations may for the most part 
be made without separate mention for each sex. Actors 
and showmen are on the border-line between this and 
the preceding group. They are mostly vaudeville per- 
formers or members of Negro troupes. The number of 
Negro music teachers is constantly increasing, to keep 
pace with the increasing demand for musical instruc- 
tion among this race. At least one of the women 
teachers has sung in a white church for many years, 
and has had some white pupils. She is also the in- 
ventor of the phoneterion, a device to assist persons 
whose purity of tone is impaired because they cannot 
keep the tongue in place while singing.^ Among the 
literary men and women are included a small number 
of newspaper reporters, most of whom are employed 
by local or outside publications of their own race, but 
two of whom are on white newspapers of the city.^ The 
Negro men listed as teachers in schools, though having 
their home in Boston or happening to be there when the 
census was taken, are, with one exception, connected 
with institutions in the South. The single exception 

^ Reference is had to Mrs. Nellie Brown Mitchell, widow of the 
late Charles L. Mitchell, who will be recalled as one of the prominent 
6gures in the local history of his people since the war. 

^ Robert Teamoh, on the Globe, is well known among the report- 
orial coterie. His special field is educational news, and only to a small 
extent does his work fall among his own race. 



860 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

referred to is that of the head and proprietor of a local 
school of pharmacy, in which all but a few of the pupils 
are white. ^ Mention has already been made in another 
context of the Negro women who are teaching in the 
public schools of Boston, 

Of the Negro dentists, one who recently died had the 
most noteworthy record.^ At one time this man was a 
member of the faculty of the Dental School of Har- 
vard University. He made a reputation by exceptional 
skill in bridge work, and his patronage included a sub- 
stantial proportion of white people. Among the phy- 
sicians, of whom there are now about twenty, several 
have a considerable white practice.^ One has rendered 
a special service to his race and to the community by 
establishing a hospital, managed on a semi-cooperative 
plan participated in by Negro churches and organiza- 
tions, and providing better opportunity than has 
hitherto existed for clinical work by Negro physicians, 
and for the training of Negro nurses.^ At this hospital 
some white patients have been treated. The lawyers, 
who now number close to twenty-five, show a larger 
proportion of men of ability than is the case in any 
other single occupation. Reference has already been 
made, in other connections, to some of the most promi- 
nent of these Negro attorneys; — William H. Lewis, 
Archibald H. Grimke, Butler R. Wilson, Clement G. 
Morgan, James H. Wolff, William J. Williams, and 

1 Dr. Thomas W. Patrick. 

2 Dr. George F. Grant. 

' This is notably the case with Dr. S. E. Courtney, whose election 
to the former School Committee of Boston has been previously 
mentioned. 

* Dr. C. N. Garland. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 361 

Edgar P. Benjamin.^ All these men, by virtue of their 
part in affairs not only within but outside their own 
race, must be accounted influential members of the 

^ Though others are more active in public affairs, purely on the 
basis of professional success Benjamin ranks among the first. The 
following autobiographical statement, which he consented to write, 
is representative of the conditions from which a majority of Negro 
professional and business men have risen: — 

" Within sight of Fort Sumter out in the bay and with a fragment 
of a Yankee shell still embedded in the eaves were the conditions 
under which I first saw the light, December 22, 1871, at Charleston, 
South Carolina. 

"The youngest of five children, I, the child of a Negro mother 
and a Hebrew father, formed a link between the old and the newest 
acquisition to civilization. With self-complacency the dominant 
race claims the credit for any good qualities that a mulatto might 
develop and a disclaimer of any and all bad ones. Without attempt- 
ing to point out the fallacies of such a view, I am convinced that the 
teachings and training of 'the best mother that ever lived' is the 
foundation stone upon which has been built all that may redound to 
my credit in a comparatively uneventful career. 

"There is reason to believe that on the paternal side a near rela- 
tionship might be shown to Judah P. Benjamin, the one-time Secre- 
tary of the Southern Confederacy and afterwards the foremost jurist 
of England and leading authority in the branch of the law called 
Sales; but tracing the branches of the genealogical tree must bide a 
time before it becomes an alluring avocation for the American Negro. 

"My sojourn in the Southland, however, was not even a memory, 
as in 1872 the little mother with her brood of five started for what 
was already the Mecca of the Negro — Boston. And such a brave 
little mother it was, single-handed and alone to fight climate and 
privation so that her children might ' get a good schooling.' This was 
her chief thought and she well knew the value, for her own educa- 
tion was very nearly the equal of a Boston grammar-school graduate. 

"We arrived just before the great fire, and with the exception of 
eighteen months spent in Charleston in 1882, after an attack of 
sickness, my adopted city has found me a constant worshiper. 

"Attendance at the primary, grammar, then the English High 
School, and an advanced course there, entering Boston University 
and graduating from the Law school in 1894 was my preparation for 
my chosen calling, the practice of the law. Originally intending to 
do this in the West, the chance taking of the bar examination before 



,36^ THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

community, while as many more are close seconds to 
them in this respect. The majority of the Negro 
lawyers have some white clients, and in the case of half 
a dozen the larger part of their practice, at least in 

completing my course, and passing it successfully, determined me 
upon staying in Boston. 

" My desire was to enter the office of some first-class law firm for a 
year or two, but I found that the supply for such positions far ex- 
ceeded the demand, and further that such openings were entirely 
without compensation. Both of these conditions compelled me to 
strike out for and by myself, and, though I felt it a misfortune at the 
time, I have since realized it to have been of the greatest value to me, 
as there being no short cuts in solving knotty points the laborious 
learning involved and the self-reliancy developed have often proven 
their worth. 

"With the loan of twenty dollars, and a desk and a couple of 
chairs as an office equipment, I started out, and have remained in the 
same building but in larger quarters to the present time. 

"Perhaps others of the newly fledged have had the same experi- 
ence, but much to my surprise I found that the many friends and 
acquaintances from whom I had mentally calculated I might get a 
stray bill or two to collect were apparently well satisfied with their 
own attorneys, and that my clients, if they came at all, must come 
from the ranks of strangers. One resolution, however, I made and 
have proudly kept, — never to solicit any man's work or patronage, 
but that it must come unsought on my part. Another was to give to 
each man my best work and my best judgment even if the latter 
meant turning him aside from his desire to litigate. These, with 
loyalty to clients and the ethics of my profession, are the only 
secrets to my success. My practice is general and includes both civil 
and criminal. The latter, of course, is always more conspicuous 
to the general public, but is nevertheless but a very small part of my 
practice. About one third in number of my clients are colored, and 
of course the pecuniary value of their work is much smaller. I am 
sole counsel for many large firms and corporations and business 
associations, many of which are white, and perhaps do work for the 
larger portion of the piano concerns of the city. It might be of 
interest to note that a large part of my business has come to me 
through a Southern white man residing in Boston and whose friend- 
ship has been invaluable. 

" Color prejudice undoubtedly exists and exists strongly in Boston, 
as it does everywhere else in the United States; and as I observed on 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 363 

terms of money value, is with members of the other 
race. Several share offices with white men. Most of 
the younger lawyers are graduates of schools of good 
standing. 

The percentage of the Negroes of both sexes engaged 
in these semi-professional and professional occupa- 
tions, though of course slight, is nevertheless gradu- 
ally increasing and will continue to increase, in pace 
with the advance in education and intellectual ambi- 
tion. The professions doubtless hold out to Negroes of 
exceptional ability the fullest opportunity for the 
exercise of their powers on a plane above racial lines, 
so far as this is possible. Individual achievement in this 
field has probably done more to break down the mis- 
conception that all Negroes are incompetent, and to 
compel respect for the potentialities of this race, than 
has any other single factor. 

Passing on now to business proprietorships, it may 
be remarked that the typical Negro establishment, of 
which the others are to a large extent modifications or 

two diflFerent visits to Europe there are a few signs of it in England. 
This, I presume, is because of the close intercourse with Americans, 
but which the difference in language prevents on the Continent. 

"There is absolutely no 'Negro Problem,' so-called, in Boston, 
and which to my mind is only another name for the 'Problem of 
safely doing injustice to the Negro.' The Negro asks, insists, and 
only wants his Manhood Rights. He is content to have the same 
reward and the same punishment meted out to him as to a white 
man. This he substantially gets in Boston. True, there is prejudice, 
and he is debarred from most all employments, and yet is expected 
to be as law-abiding as a white man. The difficulties in meeting this 
requirement are great, but still the Boston Negro is making a credit- 
able showing, is increasing and prospering. He has been purchasing 
real estate at an amazing rate for the past six or seven years, and in 
but few instances has made a bad investment." 



364 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

outgrowths, is a grocery-fuel-dry-goods-hardware- 
china-stationery-tobacco-and-candy shop, and fre- 
quently a restaurant, real-estate agency, and moving- 
dray, all in one — and looking like the proverbial 
country store transplanted to the city. According as 
sometimes one feature predominates, sometimes an- 
other, the census enumerator lists these pot-pourris 
now under one term, and again under some other; but he 
would be sorely put to it to classify the majority did he 
not have the inclusive category "merchants" upon 
which to fall back. The undifferentiated character 
of these places aflFords further evidence of the rudi- 
mentary stage of the Negro people's economic devel- 
opment. Inasmuch as the Negro community has not 
yet produced many specialized business concerns 
which can compete with similar concerns under white 
management, Negro proprietors ofiPer for sale a range 
of wares so wide as to enable them to pick up the petty 
trade of the vicinity, and thus to piece together a 
livelihood, — oftentimes a tolerably comfortable one. 
The bootblacks included in this group are those 
having their own stands or shops; of which, however, 
none are large ones, like those so successfully oper- 
ated by Greek immigrants. Among the barber shops 
are about a dozen of good size, having an average of 
three or more chairs. The hucksters usually have 
wagons, from which they peddle vegetables, fruit, 
fuel, or ice. The draymen, or proprietors of moving- 
wagons of various sorts, are rapidly increasing in num- 
ber. In addition to the teams whose owners confine 
themselves to this business, there are an equal or larger 
number which, as already suggested, are run in con- 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 365 

nection with miscellaneous shops. The majority of 
Negro teams compare very favorably with those of 
white owners, as respects the appearance of both 
horses and wagons. These draymen do a thriving 
business among both races, and some of the most suc- 
cessful have two or three outfits. There are also 
several Negro cabmen. 

Little lunch-rooms and restaurants abound. There 
are no separately conducted Negro saloons, but there 
is one connected with a large grocery and liquor store, 
and four or five with the so-called "clubs " to which pre- 
vious reference has been made.^ The only pretentious 
Negro hotel was the Upton, the recent closing of which, 
on account of disorderliness, has already been noted. 
Report has it that for a while one of the Upton's pro- 
prietors was of the white race, but that later the place 
passed entirely under Negro management. At one 
time the bartender was a white man. Apart from its 
bad character and judged purely as a business enter- 
prise, this hotel appears to have proved successful. 
There are several smaller establishments which style 
themselves hotels, but which are really more like 
lodging-houses. The proprietor and manager of one 
of the city's well-spoken-of apartment hotels, however, 
the patronage of which is entirely white, is a Negro. ^ 
There are two good-sized livery-stables, one connected 
with a large undertaking business in the principal 

* The fewness of Negro saloons is mainly accounted for by the 
fact that the Licensing Board makes it a general rule not to issue 
licenses for them. 

^ Probably the fact of the proprietor's race is known to few of the 
patrons, with whom his direct contact is slight, though he is in charge 
on the premises. 



366 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

Negro section, and the other situated in the select 
Fenway district and having mostly a white trade, A 
downtown photographic studio owned by a Negro is 
also largely frequented by white people. There are an 
increasing number of Negro tailors with small but 
busy shops, one of the most enterprising of whom 
shares quarters with a white man, among which race 
he is working up a considerable custom. 

The majority of the Negro merchants are pro- 
prietors of those little-of-everything shops, with 
groceries predominating, to which reference has 
already been made. One out of every half-dozen of 
these concerns, however, is of substantial proportions. 
There are a smaller number of business places of more 
distinct character. One man has built up a good-sized 
trade in new and second-hand furniture. Another car- 
ries on a rather unique business in imported books. 
Of the dozen or more stationery and news shops, the 
longest established and probably best-paying one is 
located on Howard Street in the West End, in the 
midst of what has become Boston's nearest approach 
to the Bowery; and enjoys a patronage drawn for the 
most part from the bohemian white inhabitants of the 
neighborhood. The proprietor says he has often 
thought of writing a book giving his observations, 
experiences, and reflections in connection with the 
varied life of this section. His story would doubtless 
be interesting, and might perhaps put an interrogation 
point after the pretensions to superior morality on the 
part of the white race. Another prosperous business is 
that of Boston's only Negro cigar manufacturer. The 
nearest approach to a banking business among the 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 367 

Negro people is that conducted under the name of the 
Eureka Banking Company, but which is practically a 
real-estate investment enterprise. 

Of the women proprietors, the great majority are 
boarding- and lodging-house keepers. Note has already 
been made of the large proportion of lodgers among 
this element in the population; although most of these 
find rooms in private homes, there are enough others 
to create a demand for a considerable number of 
regular lodging- or rooming-houses. The proprietor 
of one of the largest Negro restaurants is a woman. 
Several of the laundries which are operated by women, 
and of which previous mention has been made, have 
developed to the point where they maintain collection 
and delivery teams. Among the many dressmakers 
are at least two who have a large trade that includes 
fashionable white patrons. 

The roll of medium-sized Negro business concerns 
could be much prolonged. But present purposes will 
be served by considering as representative those which 
have already been mentioned, and by taking account 
now in somewhat more detail of a few establishments 
which are important enough to stand out in the com- 
munity at large, and which have proved successful in 
general competition with business enterprises of the 
same kind conducted by members of the other race. 

Occupying such a position higher up in the scale, are 
three high-grade tailors. One of these, J. H. Lewis, 
should not, strictly speaking, be included, inasmuch 
as he recently went out of business, but the story of 
his rise is too interesting to be omitted. Twenty-five 
years ago, while still eking out a livelihood in a little 



368 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

back-street room, he suddenly gained a reputation in 
the making of the "bell" trousers then in vogue. 
With reputation came increased profits, and with 
increased profits removal to larger quarters on 
Washington Street, where he gradually built up an 
extensive trade, of which a minor part only was drawn 
from his own race. Most of his employees also were 
white. Following his retirement one of his sons has 
opened a shop and is emulating the father's example. 
The other two tailors to whom reference is made above, 
have select locations and command select prices. They 
are Ulysses S. Ridley, on Park Street, and W. S. 
Sparrow, on Tremont Street. Probably few of their 
patrons, most of whom are white, and still fewer of the 
general public, are aware of their racial identity. The 
late Joseph Lee built up a large catering business in 
Boston, and also established at Squantum, on the 
South Shore of Massachusetts, an inn which won a 
name for its excellent fish dinners. Since his death 
several years ago, his widow and children have carried 
on the inn, and have also conducted a successful res- 
taurant in the downtown business section of the city. 
At both places, both the patrons and the majority of 
employees are white. The largest wig manufactory in 
New England is that of Gilbert C. Harris, on Wash- 
ington Street. Harris came to Boston from Virginia in 
1892, and found employment in the hair- working shop 
of a man whose surname, Gilbert, he later adopted 
as a prefix to his own. After his employer died, he 
took over the business himself. He now supplies all 
the wigs for the Castle Square and Bowdoin Square 
theatrical stock companies, and a large proportion of 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 369 

those used by the well-known producer, Henry W. 
Savage. He also has a large mail-order trade. He owns 
his home and several other pieces of property, con- 
tributes generously to the Negro church which he at- 
tends, and is a man of sterling character. 

The Negro newspaper, the "Guardian," with the 
general printing-shop run as an adjunct to it, merits 
leading mention purely as a business enterprise. It 
has been going now for twelve years, which is much 
beyond the average length of life of the papers which 
spring up among this race. It is published regularly 
every week, has eight pages, is well set up and il- 
lustrated, and is lively and readable. More preten- 
tious numbers, commemorating special events, are 
issued frequently. A good stock of advertisements, 
including white as well as Negro concerns, has been 
built up, and year by year the circulation has been 
extended, a considerable number of white people hav- 
ing been interested suflBciently to become subscribers. 
Independently of the question of his equal rights pro- 
paganda, which has previously been considered, the 
editor, William Munroe Trotter, is entitled to sub- 
stantial credit for having made his paper a business 
success. 

The retail and wholesale grocery and provision store 
of Goode, Dunson & Henry, situated on Shawmut 
Avenue near the center of the principal Negro colony, 
is a concern which has grown up to its present size 
gradually from small beginnings. It is an example of a 
specialized business, conducted by members of this 
race, which has attained proportions that enable it 
successfully to compete with white concerns of the 



370 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

same kind, not only for the Negro trade, but also for 
that of the white residents of that district. Through 
its wholesale department it supplies many of the 
smaller Negro grocery stores. 

Probably the most noteworthy example, everything 
considered, of a Negro business which has been built 
up almost entirely within racial lines, is that of Basil F. 
Hutchins, the undertaker. The latter's main estab- 
lishment is located in the midst of the principal Negro 
colony, while in addition he has a branch in Cam- 
bridge and agents in other sections. He has come 
nearer than any one else to acquiring a monopoly 
among his own people. He is also the proprietor of one 
of the livery-stables already mentioned, and is one of 
the leading Negro property owners. 

The most remarkable record of all, however, but ex- 
actly the opposite of that just described, in having 
been achieved almost wholly outside of race bounds, 
is that of Theodore Raymond, in Cambridge, to whom 
previous reference has been made as respects his civic 
prominence in that suburb. Raymond has the largest 
real-estate business in the University City, having dis- 
tanced all white competitors. His own property hold- 
ings are said to be worth upwards of $200,000. Com- 
paratively little of his business is with Negroes, and his 
employees are white. A great many of those who en- 
gage him as agent know nothing of his racial identity. 
So high is his standing in the community that the fact 
of his race has been a negligible factor, at least so far 
as any adverse effect is concerned. This, indeed, is 
the most notable feature of the case. 

The number of Negro business places is rapidly in- 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 371 

creasing. In the chief Negro district, where ten years 
ago there were not more than twenty-five of them, 
there are to-day, exclusive of lodging-houses, close to 
one hundred. In the lesser Negro sections of the city 
are approximately as many more, while tucked in here 
and there in predominately white neighborhoods are 
still others, probably half a hundred. The total for 
Boston proper is thus about two hundred and fifty. 
In Cambridge are at least fifty more, and in the other 
suburbs, combined, an equal number; which brings the 
entire number for Greater Boston up to three hundred 
and fifty or above. Though, as has been said, most of 
these concerns are still of humble proportions, it is 
also true that most of them are in process of growth; 
and the small number which have already attained 
considerable stature indicate the future toward which 
many of the others are developing. Even in the case 
of the humblest, however, the elements of ownership, 
management, and responsibility are present, as vital 
factors in instilling the Negroes with confidence in their 
self-reliant economic ability. Though probably these 
business places get only a small fraction of the entire 
trade of the Negro people as measured in terms of 
money, inasmuch as the members of this race appear 
to buy where they can obtain what they want, making 
no special effort to patronize their own concerns, they 
do secure most of the petty day-by-day purchases of 
the Negro rank and file, for the simple reason that 
they are nearest at hand. This trade within the race 
is surely tending to draw the Negroes more closely 
together, especially along economic lines. Every time 
a Negro makes a purchase in a Negro store, his respect 



372 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

for his race and for himself is enhanced. These Negro 
business places when taken together, moreover, pro- 
vide work for from five hundred to a thousand Negro 
employees. For the proprietors, this means develop- 
ment of the sense of being responsible employers of 
labor, and as such contributing to the economic up- 
building of the Negro community; while for the em- 
ployees, it means increased respect for and loyalty to 
their race, and the consciousness of having through 
their daily work a part in the Negro people's economic 
advance. Also, as has been mentioned, many of these 
Negro establishments receive a considerable measure 
of patronage from among the members of the other 
race. Every time a Negro proprietor sells goods to a 
white customer, his confidence in himself and his peo- 
ple is increased. Every time a white customer buys 
goods from a Negro merchant, his respect for the Ne- 
gro rises. Furthermore, the total of white employees in 
Negro business places is much above what might be 
supposed, — probably between one and two hundred in 
Greater Boston. When a Negro becomes able to em- 
ploy a white man, he naturally feels somewhat more 
hopeful regarding the future of his race. When a white 
man finds himself working for a Negro proprietor, he 
speedily gets rid of the notion that all Negroes are 
menials. 

The survey of the three broad industrial groups or 
gradations, into which the Negroes at work in Boston 
have for present purposes been distributed, has now 
been completed. The special conditions which apply 
to each group, and to the specific occupations of which 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 373 

each is composed, have been taken up in sufficient 
concrete detail to give the reader at least a cursory 
acquaintance with the facts. It has appeared that in 
the case of all three groups there is a distinct trend 
upward toward industrial and economic betterment. 
This survey may now be supplemented by considera- 
tion of certain factors whose application is not limited 
to any particular occupation or to any one group, but 
which are of more general bearing, and which also 
involve in somewhat larger measure the connections 
which exist between the economic situation of the 
Negro people and certain forces operative in the com- 
munity at large. The Negro's relation to the labor 
unions, the degree to which he is taking advantage of 
the opportunities for education along industrial lines, 
the extent of his ownership of property, and the mani- 
festation of any movement on his part in the direc- 
tion of combination and cooperation for the purpose 
of furthering his own economic welfare; — these are 
the principal factors of such wider scope to which ref- 
erence is here intended. 

With respect to the labor unions, it is a fact that the 
number of Negroes found in their ranks is not large. 
Probably not more than one union in twenty has any 
Negro members at all, and of those which have, prob- 
ably not over one in ten counts half a dozen or more 
of this race on its rolls. The chief reason for this is not 
far to seek. As has been pointed out, the proportion 
of Negroes engaged in menial and common labor is 
far larger than the proportion of whites employed in 
similar labor; — in the case of men, 76 per cent as com- 
pared with 13 per cent. In work of this lowest grade, 



374 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

the supply of laborers is ordinarily much in excess of 
the demand for them. Unions, however, depend for 
their effectiveness on a shortage in the labor supply 
which enables them to enforce their demands upon 
employers. The unions are, therefore, fewest in num- 
ber and weakest in strength in the field of menial and 
common occupations. This means that for the great 
mass of Negro laborers there are either no unions at 
all to join, or none that are much worth joining. At 
the same time, the number of Negroes engaged in work 
of higher grade, where unions are more numerous and 
stronger, is so small, as compared with the number of 
whites, that, even if the percentage of such Negro work- 
men belonging to unions should equal the percentage 
of unionized white workmen of the same grade, the 
former would still form but a very slight contingent 
of the union membership. 

Beyond this, however, there are two further, though 
minor, reasons why the number of Negroes enrolled 
in the unions is smaller than otherwise it might be. 
One of these consists of a lack of understanding and 
to some extent a mistrust of unions on the part of the 
Negro people. A majority of those who by the nature 
of their work are qualified for union membership do 
not appreciate the union's purposes and functions. 
Individuals whom the writer has questioned have said 
to him that they see clearly enough the certainty of 
paying out hard-earned money in dues and special 
assessments, together with the danger of losing good 
positions through strikes ; but not much in the way of 
sure and substantial benefits. The number of Negroes 
who hold this view, and who make no effort whatever 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 375 

to get into unions, is undoubtedly far larger than the 
number of those who do make such an effort but find 
themselves barred. 

At the same time it is true that the attitude of some 
of the unions is unfavorable to the Negro, and that this 
is the remaining reason which accounts for the latter's 
limited enrollment in the ranks of organized labor. 
The effect of this element in the situation, however, 
is usually much exaggerated. On the basis of evidence 
at hand, in fact, the writer would be unable to point 
to more than half a dozen organized trades in which he 
feels sure the unions are opposed in any positive way 
to admitting members of the Negro race. Even in these 
cases, it would still be doubtful whether the non-admis- 
sion of Negroes was a hard-and-fast rule applying to all 
local unions in the trade without exception; while the 
chances would favor finding in some quarter at least 
a few individuals whose personal popularity, excep- 
tional skill, or other special circumstance had gained 
them entry. Even in some of the cases where Negroes 
are completely absent from the union membership, 
there would yet be a question as to whether the prin- 
cipal reason therefor does not lie in the fact that 
practically no Negroes are engaged in this kind of 
work, or at least none who have ever applied for ad- 
mission to the union. Under such conditions any al- 
leged opposition to the Negro within the unions is of 
rather an abstract character which has never been put 
to a concrete trial, and which if subjected to such a 
specific test might give way. But after making all 
such allowances, it nevertheless remains true that a 
considerable number of the unions are averse to admit- 



376 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ting members of the Negro race. The Negroes them- 
selves complain that such is the case, and the ab- 
sence of persons of this race from the membership of 
the great majority of the unions may fairly be taken 
as implying a hostile attitude on the part of some of 
them. Furthermore, though the constitutions of most 
unions expressly forbid discrimination on the grounds 
of religion, race, or color, and though very few unions 
would openly and officially admit that they pursued 
an opposite policy, the writer has nevertheless heard 
representative individual members of various unions 
grant that it would be next to impossible for a Negro 
to get into those unions. What proportion of the unions 
are opposed to Negroes is a question to which only a 
broad answer can be given; but in all probability they 
are distinctly in the minority. To say that even a mi- 
nority are thus prejudiced is going further than the re- 
port of a special inquiry into this matter conducted by 
the State Bureau of Statistics of Labor, which stated its 
conclusions on this point very briefly, as follows : "There 
appears to be no discrimination shown by the trades 
unions in regard to membership of the Negro. . . . Ap- 
plication was made to trades unions in the state as 
to their attitude, and the generally expressed opinion 
was that no discrimination was made." ^ But while 
the majority of unions are not positively hostile to the 
Negro, and while some of them, as will appear im- 
mediately, have a contingent of Negro members, it is 
at the same time a patent fact that few, if any, have 
shown any interest in the Negro's industrial welfare. 

* Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 
p. 285. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 377 

The unions have not yet undertaken any educational 
campaign among this element of the industrial com- 
munity to provide it with a better understanding of 
their objects. They have made no special effort to enlist 
the Negroes in their ranks. In short, they have for 
the most part kept to a passive and neutral position. 
The part which the Negroes have in the local labor- 
union movement to-day is by no means so small, how- 
ever, that it may be left out of account. There is one 
separate Negro organization, the Boston Colored 
Waiters' Alliance, or Local 183 of the American 
Federation of Labor, which, however, appears to be 
more of an employment station and social club than a 
union in the full sense. It is composed mainly of so- 
called "public waiters," who are not regularly em- 
ployed anywhere, but who work intermittently on 
catering jobs and as extra men. They hold their 
charter from the white waiters' alliance (Local 80) 
to which the Negroes used to belong, but from which 
they withdrew of their own desire to form a semi-in- 
dependent group, this step apparently being taken 
because of the more or less distinct demand for Negro 
waiters and the more sociable time the members of 
this race could have by themselves. They are still 
closely affiliated with the white union, a joint committee 
conducting joint business, and there being an agree- 
ment that white and Negro waiters shall not attempt 
to compete with each other. Though this organiza- 
tion sometimes intercedes in difficulties with employers, 
strikes have never been resorted to and probably would 
accomplish little, on account of the plentiful supply 
of non-union waiters who may easily be had. 



378 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

There used to be a union among the meat-loaders 
about the docks which included both Negroes and 
whites, but it was disrupted as a result of attempting 
strike tactics. At present there are several longshore- 
men's unions which have Negro members, but for the 
same reason of the excess of supply of such labor, 
these amount to little. A few Negroes belong to the 
freight handlers' unions, which are in a little better po- 
sition in that they have an agreement with the railway 
companies regarding conditions of employment. Of 
the Negroes engaged in work of better grade, a small 
number are scattered here and there through unions 
of the various vocations, while in one group, namely, 
that which is made up of the different kinds of team- 
sters and teamsters' helpers, they contribute a con- 
siderable quota, being reported to have several hun- 
dred union members. They are especially numerous 
among the coal drivers' unions, in at least one of which 
they constitute a majority. Negroes hold places on 
the executive committees of at least half a dozen of the 
separate unions of teamsters, and there are four mem- 
bers of this race on the joint council which repre- 
sents all these unions together. It is interesting to 
note in this connection that at the time of the general 
teamsters' strike in 1902, all but two or three of the 
Negro unionists remained loyal to the organization. 

Summarizing the facts which have been set forth in 
this matter, the conclusions which the concrete evi- 
dence appears to warrant are, then, as follows: First, 
that the unions have not as yet been a factor of much 
importance, either pro or con, in the Negro's industrial 
welfare; second, that only in the case of a small minor- 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 379 

ity of unions, however, has there been any positive op- 
position to receiving Negroes into membership; and, 
third, that in the total a considerable number of 
Negroes do actually belong to unions, and are sharing 
in whatever benefits they may bestow. 

Passing now to the question of whether any ameliora- 
tion of the Negro's condition is being effected through 
the medium of industrial education, it may be stated 
that a substantial number of Negro young men and 
young women are in fact equipping themselves thus to 
do better work and to earn a better living. The 1909 
Report of the Boston Trade School for Girls showed 
that during the then ended five-year period following 
the school's establishment, there had been 86 Negro 
girls in a total enrollment of 961. This was a propor- 
tion of 9 per cent, or more than four times the propor- 
tion of Negroes in the population of Boston. In a table 
giving the records of a representative number of 
girls who had attended the school six months or more, 
it appeared that out of 1 1 Negro girls who had attended 
the dressmaking department from six to nineteen 
months, only 2 showed no marked progress by the time 
of leaving, while 2 advanced from "poor" to "good," 
4 from "fair" to "good," and 3 from "good" to "very 
good" and "excellent"; that all subsequently ob- 
tained positions in the dressmaking trade, and at the 
end of from six months to four years, all but one showed 
wage increases averaging $2.15 a week, and in several 
cases running as high as $4 a week. The presence of the 
Negro girls at this school gave rise to no friction. Some 
of the Negro girls who have attended this institution 
carry their practical education still further in the 



380 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

dressmaking, millinery, and handwork classes at the 
Women's Educational and Industrial Union. These 
girls are reported as doing well, as causing no embar- 
rassment, and as being able to obtain good positions 
without much difficulty. 

Negroes are found among the students enrolled in 
the special industrial classes of the Y.M.C.A., Wells 
Memorial, Franklin Union, and other similar institu- 
tions, and at private trade schools run on a commercial 
basis. The Y.M.C.A. had about forty members of this 
race last year, and Wells Memorial about a dozen. 
The great majority of these were in the classes for 
chauffeurs and automobile workers. Most of the 
private automobile schools also reported a few Negro 
pupils, the generally expressed opinion regarding whom 
was that they were substantially on a level with the 
whites in point of aptitude. The reference which has 
already been made to the rapid increase of Negro chauf- 
feurs in the last few years suggests that the members 
of this race are turning the opportunities for educa- 
tion in this calling to very practical and immediate 
account. The recently established Franklin Union is 
limited to advanced technical instruction for men al- 
ready engaged in the respective trades, but who are am- 
bitious to better themselves. On account of this re- 
striction, the number of Negroes in attendance would 
necessarily be slight. There were about half a dozen 
last year and also the year before. The instructors say 
that while the Negro pupils do not take hold quite so 
quickly and earnestly as the white ones, when they 
are once started they do fairly well, get on amiably 
enough with the others, and in most cases are enabled 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 381 

by the instruction given to obtain better positions. 
As regards the Negro boys and girls in such of the pub- 
lic schools as provide industrial and commercial courses, 
specific figures are not available, for the reason that 
no statistics by color are kept or given out by the school 
authorities. But unofficial information is to the effect 
that a substantial number of Negro youth are going to 
these schools, the proportion apparently being largest 
in the courses in stenography and bookkeeping. Many 
of the rising generation of this race are taking up simi- 
lar subjects in the private business schools, a particu- 
lar attraction in the case of the latter being the com- 
paratively brief period of application that is required. 
All in all, it is evident that the Negro people are com- 
ing to have a better understanding of the practical 
value of industrial training. They are talking about it 
more and more in their society meetings. Each Negro 
boy or girl who enters an industrial school brings in 
others by the influence of example. The most potent 
element of all, doubtless, in furthering this movement, 
is observation on the Negro's part of the fact that boys 
and girls who are equipped in this way do actually get 
more satisfactory positions and better pay. As a joint 
result of these factors, the number of Negroes who 
are thus preparing themselves to mount to a higher 
rung in the industrial ladder is year by year becoming 
larger. Such is the prevailing testimony. At the Trade 
School, for instance, to which reference has already 
been made, there were seven Negro girls the first 
year of the school's existence, and twenty-eight the 
fifth year. This particular rate of increase may be 
accepted as roughly representing the general rate at 



382 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

which the members of the race are moving to avail 
themselves of the opportunities in this direction. 

It is when the test of ownership of property is ap- 
plied, however, that the basic economic progress the 
Negroes are making becomes most strikingly manifest. 
Several references in general terms have previously 
been made to this matter, but some concrete figures 
may now be adduced. These figures have been gath- 
ered at no small pains and through the cooperation of 
many persons. The desired information could not be 
obtained from the land records alone, since these rec- 
ords contain no specifications as to race or color of 
owners, and since Negro owners could not be distin- 
guished by characteristic name forms as would be the 
case with Polish or Italian immigrants. The only prac- 
ticable method, and the one which has been followed, 
has been to ascertain the facts from individual Negroes 
who, by reason of being in the real-estate business or 
through other circumstances, have become accurately 
informed as to property ownership among their peo- 
ple, and who have also undertaken to verify and sup- 
plement their knowledge by consultation of the official 
records. In the case of the suburbs, where, with the 
exception chiefly of Cambridge, the number of Negroes 
is comparatively small, the facts could be more easily 
known or discovered, and substantially complete in- 
formation has been procured. In Cambridge, where 
the Negro contingent is large and somewhat scattered, 
several persons were called upon for the desired facts 
pertaining to the several districts concerned, and in 
this way an approximation to completeness was ob- 
tained. In Boston proper, where this element of the 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 383 

population is still larger and still more widely distrib- 
uted, about a dozen persons supplied information, but 
even so the approximation to the facts was necessarily 
less close. As for the values given, these are in part the 
assessed valuation, and in part the estimated selling 
price; on the average they may be accepted as fair 
market values. 

The actual figures obtained, for Boston proper, 
Cambridge, and 15 of the 27 other suburbs, but cover- 
ing only ownership by individuals, were as follows: 
In 15 suburbs, real property to the value of $693,085; 
in Cambridge, to that of $869,000; and in Boston 
proper, to that of $1,143,500; making the total for 
Greater Boston, $2,705,585. These, however, are 
minimum amounts. In the case of the suburbs, for 
which as previously stated the returns were substan- 
tially complete so far as they went, there were, never- 
theless, 12, including one (Lynn) with a good-sized 
Negro population, for which no returns were made. 
In the case of Cambridge, and to a still greater degree 
in that of Boston proper, it was apparent that the re- 
turns were considerably below the facts, inasmuch as 
each new informant was able to add appreciably to the 
count. Nor do the above figures include property owned 
by real estate companies, churches, and societies. In- 
telligent supplementary estimate, made on the basis 
of collateral evidence at hand and general acquaint- 
ance with conditions among the Negro people, must 
therefore be brought to bear to round out these figures. 
Considerations no less important than the matter of 
value, moreover, are the number and occupation of 
property owners, and the number and character of the 



384 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

properties owned. Though occupations were given 
for a quota sufficient to be regarded as representative, 
the number of owners reported (641) must be added 
to by estimate, while similar calculation must enter 
even more largely into the number of pieces of property 
owned, this information having been lacking in about 
twenty-five per cent of the returns. The question of 
what constitutes a "piece" of property is also open to 
difference. For example, there are many cases of two 
adjacent lots containing a so-called double house. It 
might be said that if a single lot and house is counted as 
one "piece," two lots and a double house should be 
counted as two "pieces." But for the reason that the 
most important element involved in this connection 
is probably the enterprise and responsibility contin- 
gent upon ownership of properties which require 
separate management, the writer has reckoned such 
double houses and also a few tracts of unimproved lots 
or gardening land, which are units so far as manage- 
ment is concerned, as single "pieces." 

The figures finally arrived at, on this basis, and which 
may warrantably be regarded as near, and if any- 
thing below rather than above, the facts, are as fol- 
lows:^ — 

PROPERTY (REAL) OWNED BY NEGROES 

Individual Ownership. 

Number Number Value 

of owners of pieces 

Suburbs (all except Cambridge) , 365 407 $ 900,000 

Cambridge 200 300 950,000 

Boston proper 215 265 1.250,000 

Total, Greater Boston . , 780 972 $3,100,000 
' For fuller details, see Appendix, table xvi. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 385 

Corporate ownership 

Owned by real-estate companies .... $150,000 
Owned by churches and societies .... 250,000 

Total, corporate ownership .... $400,000 

Summary 

Owned by individuals $3,100,000 

Corporate ownership 400,000 

Grand total $3,500,000 

Individuals owning more than one piece 

87 individuals own 2 pieces 
11 3 

9 4 

1 5 

1 6 

3 7 

1 10 

1 25 pieces or upwards. 

Total 114 2 or more pieces. 

Occupations 

346 owners distributed through 80 specific occupations, 
and grouped as follows : — 

Laborers, waiters, Pullman porters, and janitors . 148 
Skilled workmen in various trades .... 62 
Clerks, professional men, and business proprie- 
tors 136 

Total ' . 346 

In the foregoing calculation the word "own" is 
used in a moral rather than a strict property sense. 
Probably not over ten per cent or fifteen per cent of 
this property is fully paid for and free of mortgage, 
and probably not over twenty per cent is more than half 
paid for. But in the case of all of it, purchase has been 



386 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

begun and full ownership is gradually being acquired. 
The responsibility for payment and management has 
been assumed. In a moral sense, these Negroes must 
be regarded as owners. And the first thing which the 
figures prove is that the Negro people own many times 
as much property as, in view of their industrial disabil- 
ities, would generally be presumed. 

Nearly all this property consists of homes, business 
holdings forming a very small item. The great major- 
ity of these homes, probably eighty-five per cent, are 
occupied by the owners. At this stage of the Negroes' 
development, when the strengthening of their social 
and moral order is essential, the ownership of homes 
is far more important and holds out far more promise 
of substantial progress, than would be the case with 
ownership of business property on a basis of invest- 
ment or speculation. It further appears that both the 
number and proportion of home-owners is larger in 
suburban Cambridge than in Boston proper, and still 
larger in the smaller suburbs. This means that the 
Negroes are acquiring homes under the best conditions, 
— that is, not principally in the more or less con- 
gested, noisy, and dirty sections of the city, but in the 
more open, quiet, and cleanly outlying districts. It 
also means a tendency toward the wider distribution 
of the Negroes and toward residence in white neigh- 
borhoods, which in turn implies progress toward inter- 
racial understanding and amity. 

The number of real-estate holders shows that a sur- 
prisingly large proportion of the entire Negro popula- 
tion belong to the property-owning class. It is fair to 
assume that, on the average, each owner represents a 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 387 

family group of at least four, — husband, wife and 
children, widow or widower with children or relatives, 
brothers and sisters, or other combinations, — and 
that the total of 780 owners, therefore, represent at 
least 3120 people, or about one eighth of the entire 
Negro population. In other words, approximately one 
Negro out of every eight is either a property owner 
himself or an immediate member of a property-owning 
family group. A people with so substantial an experi- 
ence as this in the possession of land and home may 
look into the future with no small degree of justifiable 
confidence. 

The information respecting occupations of owners is 
significant in several ways. It fully confirms the state- 
ment made at an earlier point that a goodly pro- 
portion of those Negroes who must nominally be set 
down as belonging to the lowest industrial group, have 
in fact acquired property and thus become entitled to 
a higher ranking in the economic scale. It shows at the 
same time, however, that the members of this race who 
are engaged in what may be regarded as skilled manual 
occupations have possessed themselves of property to 
a still larger extent, in proportion to their numbers; 
while the clerical, professional, and business class 
have done better still. The number of persons owning 
two or more pieces of property evidences the evolution 
of a landlord and investor class, and the accumulation 
of a surplus capital fund. The writer knows personally 
of a dozen people who hold from four to ten pieces of 
property each.^ One of these, who, starting with innate 

' The largest owner of all is Theodore Raymond, of Cambridge, 
to whose holdings previous reference has been made. He is credited 



388 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

common sense and an appreciation of what thrift can 
do as almost his sole assets, has been most successful 
in increasing his holdings, is Robert F. Coursey; all of 
whose time is now required in giving proper atten- 
tion to his responsibilities of ownership.^ It is sig- 

in the Cambridge tax records with real property to the assessed value 
of $190,000. This total is said to be made up of twenty-five or more 
pieces of real estate which he has gradually acquired in the course of 
his business career. No doubt he owns additional property in other 
suburbs and in Boston proper. His particular case, however, is in all 
respects very exceptional. 

1 The following little autobiography shows how Coursey 's suc- 
cess has been attained, and is typical of the way in which many 
others of the race are accomplishing similar results: — 

" In offering to the public this brief sketch of my life, I dare not 
hope that it will make the strong and lasting impression that I would 
wish, but I trust that it will be productive of some partial benefit. I 
hope it will give inspiration to build character, also to strengthen 
ambition, and generally to assist in encouraging those who have 
decided to make their mark in life. They should remember that 
diligence is the mother of all good luck and that God gives all things 
to industry. 

" I was born May 19, 1861, on a farm in Canada, my father having 
escaped from slavery to Canada in the early forties. My mother was 
a Canadian by birth; her father was also a fugitive slave, having 
escaped from servitude when a lad of about sixteen years of age. By 
industry and frugality, he accumulated sufficient means to purchase 
a farm of two hundred acres, but lost it all, and all that he possessed, 
by indorsing notes for farmers of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

"When I was a boy, I attended the country school until about 
sixteen years old. I then worked on a farm for a year or so longer 
and then determined to try for a fortune in the city. At the age of 
seventeen, I went to Toronto, a distance of about twenty miles, and 
remained there about a year, after which I went to Cincinnati, 
Ohio, and from the latter place came to Boston. I readily found 
employment in the hotels there, and two years later went to Mont- 
real, Canada, where I was employed in the Pullman Car service. 
This work Uiked very much, as it offered me an excellent oppor- 
tunity of seeing the different large cities throughout the United 
States and Canada. My headquarters being in Montreal, I ran to 
Quebec, Halifax, Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago, and at the end of 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 389 

nificant that as a rule Negro landlords give preference 
to Negro tenants. Thus, while making it easier for 
their own people to find suitable homes, they are at 
the same time encouraging and furthering racial co- 
hesion and mutual help. 

every trip I invariably deposited the entire proceeds of my trip in 
the Molson Bank in Montreal, minus fifty cents that I kept in my 
pocket to begin my next run. It was not long before I had accumu- 
lated the neat little sum of $420; but alas, the tide changed. Misfor- 
tune overtook me. I found myself in the middle of winter, out of 
employment. I was bewildered. Here I was in a French-Canadian 
city, out of employment, with $420 capital. What was I to do? I 
drew my cash from the bank, packed my personal belongings, and 
hastily left for Toronto, a distance of three hundred miles, where I 
invested a portion of it in a marriage certificate. After all the little 
details were arranged and the ceremony performed, I returned to 
Boston, and when I found myself fairly comfortably settled in three 
rooms, I counted up my cash and found to my surprise that I could 
only strike a balance of $50. 

" I soon obtained employment with a drug firm and for my service 
received $8 per week. From this I paid rent and provided for my 
wife and self. A year or so later I took up janitor work, and when 
about thirty years of age, I again went over my accounts and found 
that I had a balance to my credit in the bank of $1250. This was 
Capital No. 2. Capital No. 1 having escaped from me so easily, I 
determined to put this where it would be more secure. I decided 
to invest it in real estate. I was somewhat timid in venturing alone. 
I looked around for company and found a friend whose capital was 
about the size of my own. He, like myself, was also a little afraid, 
so we decided to make the leap together, purchasing the property on 
Irving Street, giving us an equity of $2500. About a year later, I had 
saved sufficient to purchase my friend's share, and from then I began 
on my own account. I had contracted the real-estate fever. I longed 
for capital to carry on the business on a large scale. Through the 
purchase of my first property I became acquainted with a gentleman 
who was going to be absent from the country for eighteen months 
and who had some property here which he wanted some one to care 
for. I persuaded him to lease me three houses in the West End. 
These I sublet and made a fair profit, working during the day and 
collecting my rents at night. I would be at my work in the morning 
as early as four o'clock, often not returning at night until eight. I 



390 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

The fact of perhaps greatest import of all, in this 
connection, is that the bulk of the property owned by 
Negroes, probably two thirds of it, has been acquired 
during the last ten years. Testimony is unanimous 
on this point. The implication is that within the past 
decade the Negroes have at last got far enough ahead 
of the daily necessities to be able to lay something 
aside for the purchase of homes for themselves; and, 

soon found myself with capital sufficient to purchase another house 
which, after keeping about a year, I sold at a fair profit. A few years 
later I drifted into politics, joining the ranks of the Democracy, and 
in 1895 organized the Ward 11 Democratic Club, a local organiza- 
tion composed of colored voters of the ward. Two years later, when 
Mayor Quincy was nominated for a second term, we went to the 
Democratic caucus with 220 men. I was secretary of the organiza- 
tion, and was appointed by the mayor custodian of the Historical 
Building and Old Probate Court. I received a fair compensation 
and from it saved all that was possible. The incoming adminis- 
tration being Republican, did not approve of my Democratic prin- 
ciples; therefore removed me in 1899 for the good of the service. 

"Again I stopped, went over my accounts, and found that, in- 
cluding the Irving Street property, I had a balance to my credit of 
$11,000. I then bought my second house, and a few months later 
mortgaged them both and purchased the third. This one I made 
into flats which paid a fair percentage on the investment. I now 
began to realize that my capital was growing rapidly. During all this 
time 1 still continued part of my janitor work, four years later buy- 
ing my fourth house. This I also converted into flats, and two years 
later invested in my fifth house valued at $8000. A year and a half 
later I made my sixth purchase, consisting of two four-story apart- 
ment houses assessed for $13,000. Very recently I made my 
seventh investment, valued at $8000. 

" I rarely purchase property that I am not desirous of keeping, and 
of the property that I have purchased for investment, I have dis- 
posed of but two pieces, so that to-day when I stop and take account 
of stock, I find that I am paying taxes on nearly $50,000. Yes, — 

" Pluck wins — 

The average is sure; 
He wins the fight who can the most endure, 
Who faces issues — who never shirks, 
Who waits and watches, and who always works.' " 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 391 

in the case of some, for the purchase of other homes to 
be rented to their fellows not quite so far along, but 
on the way. The practical wisdom of putting savings 
into property is an ever-present theme among the Negro 
people. They manifest a veritable land hunger. Real- 
estate agents abound, and their shingles confront one 
at every turn — even in such unexpected places as 
barber shops. The Negroes are learning the lesson of 
property well, and are turning it to good account. As 
a result, the property-acquiring movement appears to 
be advancing at a constantly accelerating pace. 

This subject leads naturally into the next one before- 
mentioned for consideration, — namely, that of coop- 
eration among the Negroes for the purpose of promot- 
ing their economic welfare. For as yet such combina- 
tion is confined almost wholly to the field of land 
investment. Allusion has already been made to the 
Negro's deficiency in the capacity for cooperation in 
general. Now cooperation in the field of industrial and 
business matters, to be successful, must be thoroughly 
definite, dependable, and permanent. As might be 
presumed, therefore, organization along these lines is 
even less developed among the Negroes than is cooper- 
ation on their part in any other respect. Nevertheless 
such organization is beginning to take shape. The use 
of funds and ownership of property by churches and 
societies partake of the character of business combina- 
tion. All but a few of the twenty-five Negro churches 
hold property, though in nearly every case, as previ- 
ously pointed out, this property is heavily mortgaged. 
The constant effort to make both ends meet, and at 
least to keep the interest paid, calls for the same sort of 



392 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

joint planning and individual yielding and helping that 
is necessary in collective business undertakings. That 
the Negroes have somehow kept their churches intact 
in spite of the heavy financial burden is really a sub- 
stantial business achievement. In the societies, espec- 
ially the more prosperous fraternal lodges, the cooper- 
ative business element enters still more largely into 
operation. Some years ago one lodge undertook to run 
a grocery store with its funds. This venture proved a 
failure. But most of the lodges have a surplus in the 
bank, the care and disbursement of which call for 
mutual discussion and management. As previously 
mentioned, two of the lodges of Odd Fellows in Boston 
proper own jointly a hall in the West End, part of 
which is rented out; while in Cambridge, several 
lodges of the same order own a similar hall in common. 
The only examples of strictly business combination, 
however, consist of several small groups of persons who 
have formed real-estate partnerships and companies. 
Several concerns which solicit funds in Boston have 
their headquarters and their somewhat uncertain 
investments elsewhere, while in this city itself, the fact 
that self-styled companies spring up from time to time 
and soon pass out of existence, makes it difficult to 
know just how many genuine ones there really are and 
what they amount to. But it is safe to say that half a 
dozen not only make pretensions, but actually hold 
property which totals, as has already been estimated, 
to approximately $150,000 in value. Among these, the 
largest and most important is the organization known 
as the Goode Trust Company, or Jesse Goode Asso- 
ciates. This company, which in 1910 held about a 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 393 

dozen pieces of property assessed for $73,000, and 
which has subsequently made other acquisitions, has 
an interesting history. It is composed of some twenty- 
odd men, most of whom are waiters. Its president, 
Jesse Goode, who is also at the head of the large retail 
and wholesale grocery firm of Goode, Dunson & Henry, 
to which earlier reference has been made, used to be a 
waiter himself. He conceived the idea of taking the 
small weekly savings of his fellows and investing them 
in real estate, and on this basis the present company 
was gradually built up. Here, indeed, is a practical 
lesson by which the Negro people may greatly profit, as 
indicating how, by combination, individual savings 
petty in themselves may be massed to acquire prop- 
erty holdings which not only yield a good return to the 
individuals immediately concerned, but which also 
reflect credit upon, and afford substantial encourage- 
ment to, the whole Negro community. This particular 
organization bids fair eventually to develop into 
something more ambitious — perhaps a real bank or a 
department store — and thus to become Boston's 
first instance of business cooperation by Negroes on a 
large and successful scale. 

There is promise of a further degree of economic 
solidarity among the Negroes in the Negro Business 
League. It is an interesting fact that the national 
organization of this body, of which Booker T. Wash- 
ington is the founder and president, was launched in 
Boston, in the year 1900.^ Since then it has grown to 
such an extent that at present it comprises more than 
a dozen state branches, and close to two hundred and 
1 At Parker Memorial, August 23-24. 



394 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

fifty local ones.^ Annual conventions have been held, 
at which the Negro's agricultural, industrial and com- 
mercial problems are gone over and discussed, signal 
instances of success described, and practical measures 
of improvement recommended. The Boston branch 
was the first one to be formed, and is regarded as one 
of the strongest in the country.^ There is another 
branch in Cambridge. Locally, what this organization 
has accomplished thus far, in the main, has been sim- 
ply to bring a substantial proportion of the Negro busi- 
ness men together from time to time, for the considera- 
tion of their common interests; and thus to promote 
some consciousness of unity among them, and some 
understanding of the means by which more effective 
cooperation may be worked out. This is good seed, 
which must be sown; and though time will be required 
for the fruition, a future crop, in the form of tangible 
business progress, is certain. 

The most essential features of the Negro's economic 
situation are now before the reader. Looking back over 
the facts, stage by stage, as they have been presented, 
what is the gist of the conclusions to be drawn from 
them, and what their final and net significance? 

^ For a full list of these branches, see the Negro Year Bool; edited 
by Monroe N. Work, of the Research and Record Department of 
Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. This publication, of about 
the size of the Worlds Almanac and of which the price is 25 cents 
(postage five cents additional) is a mine of up-to-date informa- 
tion regarding the Negro's conditions in the United States and else- 
where. 

^ Branch No. 1, organized August 27, 1900, at the office of Gilbert 
C. Harris. Its present officers are: President, Philip J. AUston; 
vice-president, J. H. Madison; treasurer, W.C. Lovell; secretary, W. 
Alexaoder Cox. 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 395 

First, the Negro is, undoubtedly, still on an indus- 
trial plane many degrees below that of the white man; 
the great mass of the Negro people being confined to 
menial or common labor. That such is the case has 
been shown to be due, at bottom, to the industrial un- 
fitness of the Negro himself, arising not only from the 
peculiar conditions to which he is subjected, but also 
from certain of his own inherent shortcomings in quali- 
ties indispensable to industrial eflSciency and success. 
A secondary factor accounting for his industrial disa- 
bility consists of the pronounced discrimination 
against him on the part of the other race. While, on 
the one hand, this very prejudice is based upon the 
Negro's actual and amply demonstrated unfitness; on 
the other hand, it tends to perpetuate that unfitness by 
rendering all the higher avenues of industry compara- 
tively inaccessible to the members of this race, and 
thereby limiting their industrial opportunities. Such is 
the interaction of adverse elements, which hampers 
and retards the Negro's economic advance. 

Nevertheless, he is forging ahead. Even in connec- 
tion with those kinds of labor at the foot of the indus- 
trial scale in which the bulk of his race are employed, 
allowance must be made for the fact that he is still 
relegated to such labor by tradition and the prevailing 
prejudice in his disfavor, without regard to any higher 
potentialities he may possess; and that, turning this 
necessity to as good account as may be, he is to a large 
extent deriving from these occupations very substan- 
tial earnings, with which he is becoming enabled in 
many cases to possess himself of a home, — or at least to 
provide his family with the common comforts, to edu- 



396 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

cate his children, and thus altogether to rise measur- 
ably above his apparent and enforced industrial status. 
Better still, however, he is, in constantly increasing 
numbers and proportion, mounting into the ranks of 
those manual and clerical occupations which constitute 
the broad middle group of industry. Whatever of con- 
traction has taken place in his range of employment 
has applied mainly to the lower forms of labor, where 
during recent years he has been subjected to severe 
competition on the part of certain nationalities of 
foreign immigrants; while on the higher level a steady 
widening of his opportunities appears to be taking 
place. In this intermediate field, which is of the 
greatest strategic importance to the rank and file of 
his people, the Negro is constantly becoming more 
strongly established. At the top also, in the sphere of 
the professions and business proprietorships, a substan- 
tial and continually growing number of this race are 
found; and here the qualities of initiative, independ- 
ence, and responsibility are most fully developed, as 
vital assets for the further economic advance of the 
whole Negro community. Likewise along the more gen- 
eral lines of economic betterment, this race is making 
good strides forward. In appreciable numbers its mem- 
bers are taking part and benefiting in the trade-union 
movement. By means of practical industrial educa- 
tion, they are beginning to equip themselves to take a 
higher place in industry. As marking past achieve- 
ment and definitely insuring future progress, they 
have contrived to acquire a rather surprising amount 
of property in homes. Real-estate investments are not 
so uncommon as would be supposed. Forms of eco- 



ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT 397 

nomic combination which may introduce a new stage 
of collective capacity, are in a few instances beginning 
to take shape. The Negroes in Boston are thus not 
only laying an economic foundation, but are accumu- 
lating a surplus with which to rear the structure of a 
better family and community life. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 

The past and present of the Negro in Boston have 
now been marshaled in detailed review. But no doubt 
the query which is uppermost in the mind of the reader, 
and certainly the one which leads in interest before the 
public, is that having to do with the Negro's future. 
On the basis of the evidence contained in the foregoing 
account, is it possible, therefore, to forecast in some 
measure the destiny of the Negro people, and to pre- 
dict the position which this race will probably come to 
occupy in the community.'* 

This question resolves itself into two parts. First: — 
What is the real crux of this much discussed but seldom 
clearly expressed "Negro Problem"? Second: — 
Does this problem, thus defined, show signs of being in 
process either of aggravation, on the one hand, or of 
mitigation and solution, on the other.? 

In undertaking to answer these inquiries, which 
apply not to any one period or phase of the Negro's 
condition, but to his situation as a whole, the facts that 
have already been set forth must now be interpreted in 
a comprehensive way. In place of the historical and 
topical order, which has previously been followed, 
must be substituted that of synthesis and generaliza- 
tion. Nor will any mere restatement or summary fulfill 
the present purpose. It is the total and net significance 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 399 

of the facts at hand, in their relation to the Negro's 
road ahead, that is now required. 

Section 1. The Problem 
In all discussion regarding the Negro, two opinions, 
which at least on their face are widely at variance, may 
be distinguished. The one looks upon 

. . The Two Views 

the colored man as inherently different 
from and on a plane beneath the white man, and holds 
that its members should be kept more or less apart 
from the rest of the community, and definitely "in 
their place." The other opinion sees the Negro solely 
or mainly as the victim of an unreasonable and unfair 
race or color prejudice, and demands as a matter of 
justice that he be raised to a place of parity with other 
elements of the population, — at least in such respects 
as may be brought within the control of public or semi- 
public regulation. Many shades of opinion fall in be- 
tween these points, but these are the two extremes. 
How far do the concrete facts which are available go 
to confirm either of these views as against the other, 
to indicate that both are in error, or to show that the 
truth lies in their conjunction? 

It is of course undeniable that the precedent condi- 
tions from out of which the Negro popu- conditions of 
lation of Boston is derived, have, from O"^'" ^^^^""-^ 
the earliest period down to the present, been of a pecu- 
liarly inferior kind. 

The first members of this race to appear in that city 
were brought, by way of the Bahamas, from their 
native African jungle, where from time immemorial 
their ancestors had lived in a state of primitive savag- 



400 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

ery. They were savages themselves, utterly ignorant 
of civilization, having no religion above a fear-born 
superstition, and lacking all conception of reasoned 
morality. As to the Negroes who have taken up their 
abode in Boston in the long period since the landing 
of the first shiploads of black chattels, their origin 
also has been of a terribly adverse character. The 
great mass of them have been either former slaves, or 
the offspring of slaves, from the South; where for two 
centuries and a half their race was held in a subjection 
even more degraded than the savage state of their 
ancestors, so far as concerned its prohibition of all 
independence and independent progress, and its dis- 
regard of any germs of personal chastity and marital 
loyalty. Nor in the brief span of years since slavery 
was abolished in law, has the Negro's lot in the South- 
ern States, whence Boston's quota of this race is still 
chiefly drawn, been other than a slavish one in fact. 

With regard, next, to the collective attainment of 
Inferior Place in this racc in the Bostou commuuity itself; 
the Community — jjgj.g Hkewisc the Ncgro appears al- 
ways to have occupied an inferior place. 

At first he was held as a slave. Then, from the time 
slavery died out in the State until the national emanci- 
pation of his race, he rose only a few degrees, to the 
rank of a servant class, still lacking many of the man- 
hood privileges possessed by the city's other inhabi- 
tants. Since the war, though endowed with political and 
civil rights equal to those of white citizens, the Negro 
people have nevertheless remained the most backward 
group in the community. In point of mere physical 
replacement and increase of their stock, which is surely 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 401 

the indispensable basis for any permanent collective 
progress on their part, they have not till very recently 
begun to hold their own; their depletion by deaths hav- 
ing previously exceeded their replenishment through 
births. Their social order and organization are still 
the most rudimentary. Their churches are the weak- 
est. Their part in political affairs is the least. As con- 
cerns their industrial rank, the great majority are found 
at the bottom, in menial or common labor. And with 
reference, finally, to the inculcation among its mem- 
bers of any positive code of morality and any general 
ethical standards, this race is farthest in the rear. 

This inferior attainment of the Negroes as a racial 
group apparently implies a corresponding and under- 
lying inferiority on the part of the indi- ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^ 
viduals comprising this group : — so far, luferionty of the 
at least, as respects their past and present 
abilities. Leaving out of account at this juncture the 
minority, made up of those who are exceptions to the 
general rule, and confining attention to the common 
mass of the Negro people, what are the facts with re- 
gard to the degree in which the average Negro meas- 
ures up to the average white man? 

Certain respects in which the Negro is found below 
par have already been specified, at appropriate points 
in the present account. These may now, however, be 
recalled and assembled together, so that their full 
significance may be the better understood. 

Starting with the lowest plane, the physical, the 
Negro has been shown to evince a lesser reproductive 
power, and also a lesser resistance, not only to disease, 
but to the general wear and tear of present-day urban 



402 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

conditions. The propensity of the members of this 
race to rove about more or less futilely from place to 
place is symptomatic of a lack of stability. In the 
broadly social field, the Negro exhibits a glaring in- 
capacity for cooperation of the underlying and per- 
manently sustained kind, as distinguished from simple 
sociability and gregariousness, which is so frequently 
fickle and ephemeral. Here also, in the Negro's hesi- 
tancy to take responsible action on his own account, 
and in his constant falling back upon the other race 
for guidance and support, is disclosed a want of initia- 
tive and self-reliance. These same deficiencies, which 
thus appear in their bearing upon social organization, 
are evidenced still further in political affairs, where 
they show themselves in the Negro's failure to take 
fuller advantage than he now does of his potential 
voting strength; and also in religious activity, where 
these identical failings largely underlie the difficulties 
that beset the Negro churches on the side of manage- 
ment and financial maintenance. In the obliquity of 
many of the Negro ministers, as well as in the tolera- 
tion of such culprits by their congregations, is revealed 
a serious defectiveness of moral vision; while a short- 
age in the power of restraint and self-control are indi- 
cated by the Negro's proneness to an excess of re- 
ligious emotionalism. In connection with industrial 
and economic conditions, obvious shortcomings in 
the basic qualities of trustworthiness, responsibility, 
accuracy, and thoroughness, largely account for the 
relegation of the bulk of this race to menial and other 
low-grade labor; while want of persistence and of fixed 
purpose, together with lack of initiative and of the 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 403 

ability for combination, are further inherent obstacles 
in the way of the Negro's rise into higher callings and 
of his advance along independent and cooperative 
commercial lines. With reference, lastly, to the prac- 
tical standards of rectitude of this race, the Negro's 
disproportionate commission of crime and his flagrant 
sexual laxity are but two of the most obvious out- 
croppings of a generally discernible moral and etljical 
undevelopment, by which he is characterized. 

Thus it appears that the ordinary run of Negroes 
are lacking in many of the chief elements which go to 
make up actual competitive worth and accomplishment. 
The definite value of this conclusion will be enhanced, 
however, if the elements here involved turn out, on 
further scrutiny, to be not disconnected from one an- 
other, but so closely inter-related that they may per- 
haps be reduced to a common denominator. 

To the end of determining whether such is indeed 
the case, the qualities in which the Negro has been 
shown to be deficient may now be set down more con- 
cisely, and with some approximation to their natural 
sequence. They are as follows: reproductive power; 
resistance to disease and to general wear and tear; 
stability; self-control; trustworthiness; responsibility; 
accuracy; thoroughness; persistence; constancy of pur- 
pose; initiative; self-reliance; positive morality and 
defined ethical standards. 

When these qualities are thus lined up side by side, 
does it not become evident that each and all of them 
are characteristics the Negro's falling short in which 
clearly signifies an intrinsic weakness or flabbiness at 
the very root and core of his make-up? Let the reader 



404 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

go through this list of failings item by item, and he will 
find that every one of them bears out this interpreta- 
tion. What the Negro lacks, in short, is that some- 
what indefinite but nevertheless sufiiciently well under- 
stood and absolutely fundamental attribute, called 
stamina. This is his central and underlying deficiency, 
in which all the others that have been enumerated have 
theic common source, and of which they are, in truth, 
only the more or less differentiated manifestations. 
With respect to reproductive power and resistance to 
disease, it is more specifically with relation to physical 
and nervous stamina that the Negro exhibits a short- 
age. But even here the lack goes deeper — or higher — 
than the merely physical. The Negro reveals a want 
of that vital something which enables one to resist and 
overcome even physical exhaustion, with sheer force 
of will; and which renders one capable of standing up 
to his responsibilities and putting his best endeavor 
into the tasks before him. The element here involved 
is in its nature essentially moral, — not in the narrower 
or more conventional application of this term, but in 
its broadest and most basic sense. The final diag- 
nosis of the Negro's case must be, then, that when 
weighed in the scale he is found wanting, in point of 
fundamental moral stamina. 

To the previous question, therefore, as to whether 
any actual inferiority on the part of the individual 
Negro is found to underlie the backwardness of this 
race as a group in the community, an affirmative 
answer must be given. So far as pertains to the past 
and to the present, the average Negro — using this 
unscientific term for lack of a better — has always 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 405 

been, and still is, inferior to the average white man. 
Nor does this inferiority show itself in respects which 
are only of superficial or minor importance. It is as 
deep-seated as possible, and extends throughout the 
whole range of the Negro's character and conduct. 

In the light of this conclusion, it will now be pos- 
sible to take account more understandingly of the 
second projecting feature of the present „ r> ^ ^ 

tr J ^ I. Negro Regarded 

problem, — namely, the fact that from a°d Treated aa 
the very beginning the Negro in Boston 
has been looked upon and treated as an inferior by the 
city's other inhabitants. 

Far back in colonial days, the plaint that he was the 
object of contempt and ill-usage was raised by the 
Negro himself, and ever since then it has kept recur- 
ring, a pathetic and monotonous refrain. "Some view 
our sable race with scornful eye," lamented Phillis 
Wheatley, her people's first poetess and prophetess. 
A prayer for strength to bear up under the "troubles" 
and "daily insults" which the members of this race 
had to endure, was sent up by Prince Hall, sturdy 
Negro leader in the years of the nation's birth. "The 
most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that 
ever lived since the world began," was the woe-begone 
characterization of this people wrung from the heart 
of David Walker, Negro forerunner of the Abolition 
struggle. On the part of the other race, during the 
same early period, an attempt was made to drive the 
Negroes out of the city, by a law which classed them 
in with "rogues, vagabonds, common beggars, and 
other idle, disorderly, and lewd persons;" while some 
years afterwards, this attempt having failed to accom- 



406 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

plish its purpose, serious alarm was expressed at "the 
increase of a species of population which threatens 
to become both injurious and burdensome." 

After the Negro's emancipation and his admirable 
record as a soldier in the Civil War, and for twenty- 
five to thirty years following, it is true that, speak- 
ing comparatively, with reference to the preceding 
period, the Negro was considerably fostered and in- 
dulged. When all is said, however, such positive favor 
as was extended to him was confined to a small minor- 
ity of the white population; while in the case of the 
great mass of the other race, the aversion toward him 
was only somewhat softened or held in check. The 
particular instances of exclusion of Negroes from 
hotels, barber shops, and various places of entertain- 
ment, that have previously been cited, were but rep- 
resentative examples of much discrimination of that 
sort, which was in fact suflSciently pronounced to force 
the Negro people and their white champions into the 
fight for a protective statute of civil rights. 

Meanwhile, moreover, an undercurrent of opinion 
adverse to the Negro had been setting in. It had its 
source partly in the disillusionment, with regard to 
any expectation of the Negro's immediate transcend- 
ence of his conditions, resulting from the sorry spect- 
acle this race presented in the South during the notori- 
ous Reconstruction period of misgovernment. A second 
influence, working in the same direction, was the grad- 
ual inclination of the North to the Southern view of 
the Negro, as being a race on a lower plane of develop- 
ment, and therefore demanding a policy different from 
that followed with respect to other elements of the 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 407 

population. What struck closest home in Boston, 
however, was the cumulative influx into that city of 
great numbers of raw and uncouth Negro immigrants 
from the Southern Black Belt. Continued contact and 
experience with these unlovely newcomers, effectually 
modified the previously somewhat ideal sentiment of 
many white Bostonians toward the Negro in the ab- 
stract. 

These several causes gradually produced a reaction 
of feeling, and about the signal year 1895, antipathy 
toward the Negro, which, as already suggested, had 
been more or less quiescent since the war, began to 
reassert itself. During recent years this antipathy has 
apparently been on the increase — so far as the atti- 
tude of the bulk of the white population is concerned. 
To show that such has been the case, not only as some- 
thing rather intangibly felt or believed, but as a mat- 
ter of concrete and demonstrable fact, is, however, not 
an entirely easy matter. Yet what would seem to be 
specific evidence to this effect is afforded, in the broadly 
social field, by the tendency to bar Negroes from semi- 
public institutions, especially churches; on the politi- 
cal side, by the decrease to zero, in recent years, of 
elective offices held by Negroes; and with respect to 
industrial conditions, by the increase of the degree of 
resistance which a Negro has to overcome, particularly 
in occupations of better grade, in obtaining employ- 
ment. In general, this recent change of front toward the 
Negro has manifested itself in a noticeable, though as 
yet by no means far advanced, movement away from 
the Abolitionist propaganda of unrestricted inter-asso- 
ciation between the two races, and in the direction of 
the Negro's segregation to some extent. 



408 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

What, now, is the fundamental reason why in Bos- 
Prejudice Based ton the NegFO has always been looked 
upouiuferiority ^p^^^ ^^^ treated as an inferior ? Is it 

not obviously to be found in the fact, already estab- 
lished, of the actual past and present inferiority of 
the Negro himself? 

The other possible explanations of the unfavorable 
attitude in question are that it is either racial antago- 
nism or color aversion — or a combination of the two. 
As for race hostility, however, its exhibition generally 
accompanies and is roughly commensurate with ex- 
treme racial differences. But it is a very interesting 
fact, of which even the bare truth is seldom consciously 
realized, and of which the full significance in the pres- 
ent connection would require extended comment, 
that, except for color and certain other physical char- 
acteristics, the American Negro is very closely like the 
native white American. First of all, he speaks the same 
language. This means that he and his fellow-country- 
men of the other race are able to talk to and under- 
stand each other; and are thus free from those barriers 
of difference of speech, which so often lead to mutual 
misconception and distrust. In the second place, the 
Negro has the same religion as the white people round 
about him. Thus is one of the most unhappily pro- 
lific causes of contention among mankind absent from 
the relations of the Negro with his neighbors. And 
finally, most important of all, the Negro's national 
traditions and allegiance are identical wath those of 
his white compatriots. He has been in this country 
from the beginning, and is neither an adopted new- 
comer with a diverse past, nor an alien, intent or bound, 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 409 

should need arise, to serve some other flag. Instead, 
therefore, of there being ground for racial antago- 
nism between the Negro and the white members of 
the community, this oneness, at three of the most vital 
points of possible race difference, should certainly tend 
to reduce such antagonism to a minimum. 

The one element of striking dissimilarity between 
the two races is, as already suggested, that of the 
Negro's color and certain other physical character- 
istics, — more particularly a strong natural odor, 
kinky hair, and coarseness of features. Were these 
characteristics accompanied, however, by intellectual 
and moral qualities equaling or excelling those of the 
white man, is it not reasonable to presume that aver- 
sion to them would either not arise at all, or would 
at any rate be more than offset by respect and admira- 
tion .^^ Should a company of Martians — to employ a 
fanciful illustration — land upon our planet earth, 
and prove to be jet black, but at the same time unques- 
tionably our superiors, in knowledge and attainment, 
it is hardly probable that these visitors would be ostra- 
cized on the score of their color. If in this hypotheti- 
cal case any hostility should arise, it would have its 
origin in envy, and not in disdain. But it is not neces- 
sary to go so far afield for illustration and example. 
For were darkness of complexion, in and of itself, a 
sufficient cause of pronounced aversion toward races 
thus Nature-tinted, then surely such aversion should 
be exhibited toward the American Indians, the Chi- 
nese and Japanese, and even the swarthy-skinned 
southern Europeans. While it is true that more or less 
prejudice toward these races does exist, yet this does 



410 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

not appear to have arisen, except incidentally, on 
account of their complexion. Rather is it due to those 
other differences, to which attention had already been 
called as lacking in the Negro's case, or to the belief 
that these people — at least the strata of them com- 
monly found in America — are on a lower plane of 
advancement, and thereby threaten our own higher 
standards. 

That both racial antagonism and color aversion may 
figure as appreciable factors in the antipathy toward 
the Negro, the writer does not intend to gainsay. But 
to hold that, either singly or in combination, these 
are the essential elements which account for that 
antipathy, is a contention which, as has now been in- 
dicated, cannot be adequately substantiated. In the 
main and in last analysis, the aversion in question is 
based upon recognition of the Negro's past and present 
inferiority. It is not race-feeling. It is not color-feel- 
ing. It is inferiority-feeling. Differences of race and 
color, however, have the effect of making this as yet 
inferior group stand out conspicuously; whence it 
easily results that these features, which are in fact 
only incidental accompaniments of the real cause of 
the antipathy in question, are confused with that real 
cause itself. 

The actual situation may be well expressed in terms 
of one's own everyday experience. Just as any indi- 
vidual, finding himself brought into association with 
another individual whom he perceives to be of dis- 
tinctly inferior mould, naturally and almost uncon- 
sciously adapts his attitude and conduct toward that 
individual to conform with this fact; so, in the same 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 411 

way, the white race, realizing that the Negro is still 
at an inferior stage of development, feels and acts 
toward him accordingly. 

But to dismiss the prevailing attitude toward the 
Negro, thus fundamentally explained, as something 
wholly in the nature of an effect, and prejudice a Second 
having no separate existence in itself as ^^^^°^ 
a cause, of adverse reactive influence upon the Ne- 
gro's life, would be to fall far short of recognizing 
the full truth. For though this antipathy is ultimately 
and at bottom a product of real and legitimate 
discrimination as between different degrees of actual 
racial worth, yet immediately and on the surface, it 
is, to a large extent, patently undiscriminating and 
unreasonable. It manifests itself in a sweeping way 
toward the Negro people in the mass and as a racial 
group. But only in comparatively slight measure does 
it make distinction as between individuals of different 
degrees of ability, or gradations of different levels of 
attainment, within this group. And thus it becomes, 
in the strict meaning of the term, an out-and-out pre- 
judice; — or, in other words, an adverse prepossession 
of mind against the Negro in general, without regard 
to specific evidence of exceptional merit in connection 
with any particular case or class. 

Now at length have we reached the point where we 
can pass judgment with reference to the two extreme 
views of the Negro problem which were The Crux of the 
set in antithesis at the beginning of this ^'■*>''^®™ 
inquiry : — the one holding the Negro's inferiority to 
be the sole cause and justification of all his disabili- 
ties; the other assigning these same disabilities to an 



412 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

utterly unjust prejudice against the Negro, on ac- 
count of his race or color. It has appeared that 
each of these views is partly right and partly wrong. 
The former is correct in so far as it makes the Negro's 
own inferiority the root of his difficulties; but it errs 
in failing to take account, as a secondary factor to the 
same effect, of the prejudice which this very inferiority 
has produced. The second of these two views is, in 
its turn, accurate to the extent of asserting the exist- 
ence and potency of a prejudice against the Negro; but 
mistaken in tracing this prejudice mainly to differences 
of race or color, rather than to the Negro's own de- 
ficiencies; and also in advancing it as the only cause 
of the trials which this people is compelled to suffer. 
In the qualification and conjuncture of these views, 
therefore, is the full truth to be found. 

This is, — that the two vital factors here involved are, 
first, the past and present inferiority of the Negro him- 
self; and, second, the resulting prejudice against him. 
These two factors, moreover, constantly react upon 
each other. The Negro's inferiority tends, on the one 
hand, to perpetuate the prejudice to which he is there- 
by subject. This very prejudice, on the other hand, 
possessing a semi-independent entity and influence on 
its own account, has the effect of perpetuating not 
only the prevailing assumption of the Negro's infe- 
riority, but also the fact itself, by grievously handi- 
capping this race in its efforts to obtain a fair fighting 
chance. Such is the vicious circle which lies at the 
heart of the Negro problem. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 413 

Section 2. The Solution 

With the nature of the problem thus clearly deter- 
mined, the question relating to the future of the Negro 
people which still demands answer becomes, as already 
indicated : — Is this problem in process of aggrava- 
tion, or, on the contrary, in that of measurable solu- 
tion? 

As there were found to be two factors in the prob- 
lem itself, so now there are two corresponding lines of 
interrogation which need to be taken up. First, — Is 
there any convincing evidence that the Negro's past 
and present inferiority, as respects both his status 
and attainment as a racial group, and also his capacity 
as an individual, is in some degree being reduced ? 
Or positively expressed, — Does this race appear to be 
progressing? If such is the case, then of course any as- 
sumption that the Negro's inferiority is irreducible, or 
even necessarily permanent within certain limits, is 
unjustified, and the whole situation pertaining to this 
race takes on a different aspect. Second, — Does the 
prevailing prejudice against the Negro, which, hav- 
ing already been seen to have its root in his actual in- 
feriority, might be expected to diminish as that in- 
feriority itself diminishes, disclose possibly, down 
below the surface, any hopeful tendency toward such 
mitigation and decrease? If so, then the barriers which 
this race encounters, as regards the securing of an 
equal opportunity to demonstrate whatever measure 
of capacity it may possess, are becoming less severe. 

Turning now to the former of the two queries here 
proposed, — that, namely, which has to do with the Ne- 



414 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

gro's progress, — account must betaken, at the very 
Th winnin of outsct, of au Outstanding historical fact 
Freedom and which bcars witness not merely to a 

Equal Rights -j 1,1 I, i. x • j 

considerable but to an immense advance 
on the part of this race, as respects its status in 
Boston. 

For whereas in the beginning the Negro was held as 
a slave, to-day he is a free citizen, endowed with all 
those political and civil rights and privileges which it 
is within statutory power to guarantee. In this trans- 
formation of his lot, moreover, he himself has from 
first to last had a vital, if not when all is said a de- 
cisive, part. Certainly this is not the record of a class 
of the population without spirit or ambition, who have 
been content to remain always in an inferior place. 
It is that of a people who, by dint of aspiration, will, 
and native capacity, have forced their way steadily 
upward, from a position of nonentity, to their present 
rank of full equality with their white fellow-citizens, 
before the law. 

This achievement constitutes the first great element 
in the Negro's progress, and also the initial evidence 
of his progressiveness. 

Dependence solely or mainly upon the bestowment 
of rights and privileges, however, could not but prove, 
A Philosophy of i^ the vcry nature of things, a far from 
Self-reliance sufficient foundation upon which this 

race, just out of slavery, and so comparatively brief a 
period away from primitive savagery, might succeed 
in rearing for itself any competent and independent 
future. However important such legislative protec- 
tion and assistance from without may be, still more 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 415 

essential is it that the Negro should ehcit and de- 
velop, from within, any potentialities and abilities 
which he himself possesses. And if there was need 
that he should do this before, that need has become 
imperative since the recent reaction and hardening of 
attitude toward him on the part of the other race. 
For the tendency now is to show the Negro no more 
favor than his actual merits warrant; and to subject 
him, besides, to an adverse prejudice which discounts 
even such worth as he may actually have. Under these 
conditions, either he must get ahead through his own 
exertions, or not at all. 

It is significant that the Negro himself was the first 
to perceive this. Instinctively, the Negro people have 
acted upon the basic law of self-endeavor ever since 
their attainment of freedom. The fundamental task 
to which the Negro addressed himself, following his 
emancipation, was that of earning his daily bread, 
providing himself with the common decencies and com- 
forts, obtaining an education, and, in general, gradu- 
ally bettering his conditions of life. Without going 
through any involved course of reasoning, the great 
mass of this race have simply felt, intuitively, that such 
was the surest way by which they could improve their 
fortunes, and rise to a higher place in the community; 
and compared to which the agitation for equal rights 
was of secondary moment. 

When, therefore, this gospel of salvation through 
achievement first received commanding utterance, 
from the lips of Booker T. Washington, its enunciation 
virtually amounted to raising the common sense of 
the Negro masses up to the plane and power of a con- 



416 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

sciously realized principle. That such was the case 
does not lessen, but on the contrary greatly magnifies, 
the mission which Washington has performed. For 
viewed in this light, his memorable Atlanta address 
appears not alone as the deliverance of a single indi- 
vidual, but also as that of an entire people; among 
whom, though till then for the most part silently and 
invisibly, the ideas which were by him thus definitely 
expressed had meanwhile been taking root and growing 
toward fruition. Washington's entrance into the des- 
tiny of his race, summoning it, at this time of crisis 
when the helping hand of the white man seemed to 
be failing it, to hew its own way upward with its own 
resources, is thus brought within the realm of those 
great super-events which seem to come providentially 
at rare intervals in the world's history, when the need 
is dire and the hour is ripe. 

That the Negro people has evolved from within it- 
self this deep-reaching philosophy of self-reliance, is a 
fact which is pregnant wnth promise for the future. 
For the Negro has shown therein that he has a 
fundamental grasp of his own problem. And this 
means that his battle is already half won. 

The final and most decisive test of the Negro's abil- 
independent ity, howevcr, is found not merely in his 

Progress recognition of the necessity for self -effort, 

but in the actual extent to which he is advancing by 
means of his own powers. 

That the Negro people are in truth making marked 
progress along all the most essential lines must surely 
have become manifest from the account which has 
here been given. The initial fact that this race has at 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 417 

length become physically rooted in Boston, and with 
an average gain, however slight as yet, of births over 
deaths, has begun to establish a native, self-generating 
Boston stock, is suggestively representative of the 
fundamental foothold which the Negro is obtaining 
at every point. His principal living districts are not 
only of much better quality to-day than has been the 
case in former years, but are in fact considerably su- 
perior to some of those at present occupied by other 
elements or strata of the city's population. At the same 
time this distribution, in respect to residence, is con- 
tinually becoming wider and more scattered, tending 
to prevent the formation of a single segregated and 
congested Negro colony. 

The evolution of a general social order among this 
people stands out clearly, while organization for 
broadly social ends is gradually becoming more effi- 
cient and more effective. What chiefly bears witness 
to the betterment which is thus being wrought, and 
what also affords assurance that this improvement 
will continue, is the evident invigoration and health- 
ening of the Negro home and family, and of the 
neighborhood and community life of this portion of 
the population. With regard, likewise, to religious 
forces, this race is seen to be strengthening and rais- 
ing the standards of its own independent church; 
and distinctly, though as yet slowly, rallying to its 
support, as an institution which has always held a 
unique place in the life of the Negro, and which may 
now be made one of the chief bulwarks of his racial 
solidarity. On the political side, the Negro has demon- 
strated his competency by obtaining and creditably 



418 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

fulfilling many positions of public trust and respon- 
sibility. Here, too, he is consciously moving, already 
with an appreciable degree of success, toward the effec- 
tual use of the leverage resident in numbers and co- 
hesion, as a means of forcing due recognition of his 
political claims and of bringing about the adoption 
of measures aimed to promote his interests. With ref- 
erence, lastly, to his industrial and economic condi- 
tions, upon which the whole structure of his material 
well-being depends, the Negro is, little by little, but 
in measure, withal, which neither the other race nor 
he himself as yet generally realizes, making his way 
upward into occupations of better grade, where his 
range of opportunity for satisfactory employment is 
steadily broadening. The development of initiative 
and of responsible management is shown by the in- 
crease of the professional element, and still more 
clearly by the growth of business proprietorship. The 
acquisition of what is, in the total, an astonishing 
amount of property, chiefly in the form of homes, has 
provided the Negro community with an economic 
buttress of great resisting and supporting power; 
while the rise of a class of Negro landlords, renting 
mostly to Negro tenants, together with the formation 
of several real-estate companies, constitutes a small 
but promising start in the direction of racial combina- 
tion and cooperation for purposes of economic better- 
ment. 

This independent progress which the Negro is ac- 
complishing is not ordinarily discerned in anywhere 
near its full proportions, for the reason that the Negro's 
present point of advancement is usually compared 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 419 

with that of the other race. But such a comparison is 
obviously neither fair nor intelHgent. Both justice 
and accuracy demand that the situation of the Negro 
to-day be compared, not with that of the white man 
to-day, but with his own condition in the past. It is 
not necessary, however, to go back to the African 
jungle, nor even to the Southern slave plantation, but 
only to the time of emancipation and the beginning 
of the Negro's freedom, less than fifty years ago. Then 
this race was cast practically naked upon the world, 
without possessions, without organization of any kind, 
and utterly ignorant. The Negro's present plane of 
attainment, measured against this background, im- 
plies an advance which is, at the very least, remarkable. 
The assertion sometimes heard, indeed, that history 
affords no other example of a race which has made 
equal headway in its first half-century of independent 
existence, is probably within the truth. The funda- 
mental task in which the Negro is now engaged — and 
this is the comprehensive fact which summarizes and 
incloses all the others — is that of laying a foundation 
upon which to build his future. In this undertaking, 
it must be acknowledged, he is notably succeeding. 

Certain underlying elements of deficiency in the 
individual Negro, resolve themselves, in the last ana- 
lysis, into a lack of moral stamina in Negro Acquiring 
the broadest and deepest sense of the ^°^''^ stamina 
term. The progress of this racial group signifies that 
the Negro is to some extent reducing his individual 
shortcomings, and is in some measure acquiring the 
central and basic stamina of which he stands most 
vitally in need. 



420 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

This quality is one of the last and most difficult 
products of the stern and exacting discipline of centu- 
ries of civilization. That the Negro should have be- 
come possessed of it in any high degree, as yet, would 
be contrary to natural law. But that he must have 
got a further and substantial increment of this innate 
ruggedness of character, is unquestionable. If such 
were not the case, the Negro people could not possibly 
have accomplished what they have. They have stood 
on their own feet and fought their own way forward. 
This they could not have done, had they not as indi- 
viduals developed something of the spinal force which 
is essential to all achievement. Evidently the members 
of this race have grown tougher and stronger in the 
core and fiber of their make-up, and so have become 
better fitted to hold their own and to get ahead, on a 
competitive basis. 

The first of the two questions at issue in the solution 
of the Negro problem may now, therefore, be answered. 
Negro's Inferiority This qucstiou is that which coucems the 
Being Reduced extcut of the Ncgro's inferiority. The 
answer to it constitutes the most vital conclusion bear- 
ing upon the whole subject now under consideration. 
It is this : — that manifestly, in view of both the col- 
lective and the individual advance which this race 
has made, the Negro's inferiority can only be held to 
extend to his past and present development. Certainly 
it cannot be said to be an inferiority which is incap- 
able of any diminution, — for already it has been re- 
duced greatly. Nor can it even be presumed that, 
within certain limits of possible attainment, this in- 
feriority is necessarily permanent and insurmount- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 421 

able. For when account is taken both of the general 
progress which the Negro people as a group have 
accomplished and are still accomplishing, and also of 
such high attainments by individuals of this race 
as some of those to which reference has been made 
in the preceding account, the presumption must be in 
favor of continued progress; to which, on the basis 
of any evidence now at hand, no definite bounds can 
at present be set. While, on the one hand, it cannot 
as yet be predicted with certainty that the Negro will 
eventually reach a state of complete inherent equality 
with the white man; neither can it be maintained, on 
the other hand, that this is outside the range of possi- 
bility. All we know is, that, though the Negro is still 
backward, he is steadily moving forward; and that, 
though he is still below the other race in point of 
ability, he is gradually coming up. His present inca- 
pacities, therefore, appear to be not those of the lower 
orders of creation as compared with man, but rather 
those of the growing child as compared with the ma- 
ture adult. 

As the Negro's inferiority was found to be at the 
bottom of the Negro problem, and as this inferiority 
is now seen to be not only reducible, but also actually 
being reduced, the conclusion is inevitable that the 
problem itself is in process of measurable solution, as 
regards its most fundamental element. 

The other element in this problem, which still re- 
mains to be considered, is that of the prevailing preju- 
dice against the Negro. As this also was prejudice Being 
shown to have its root in the Negro's in- Undermined 
feriority, it would logically be expected to show some 



422 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

mitigation as that inferiority is lessened. But on the 
surface at least, as previously stated, this prejudice 
appears to have increased in recent years. 

In view of the sketch which has already been given 
of the course of development of the attitude toward 
the Negro, on the part of the other race, from the 
earliest period down to the present, it must be obvious 
that the antipathy which exists to-day is to some extent 
a survival and outgrowth of that which has existed in 
former years. As accounting both for the perpetuation 
of prejudice in this way, and also for its further in- 
crease, several sets of influences may be perceived. 

The first of these consists of facts, reports, or mem- 
ories, having to do with conditions of inferiority among 
this race in the past. The attitude of a great many 
people toward the Negro is without doubt determined 
wholly or mainly by such impressions from days gone 
by, with little or no regard to the present. In the case 
of some persons, the distant fact that this race was 
originally brought from a state of savagery in Africa 
is sufficient to stigmatize it beyond hope of redemption. 
Others look down upon the Negroes because they used 
to be slaves. With a much larger number, however, 
the aversion displayed is traceable to no specific 
source, but to a vague combination of things read, or 
heard, or remembered from their own experience, about 
the Negro at an earlier time. On the part of some of 
the older residents of Boston, who were living in the 
city in the first two or three decades following the 
war, when uncouth blacks were swarming in from 
the South, the disagreeable impressions then received 
stick obstinately. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 423 

A second factor working in this same direction, is 
that of accounts and hearsay concerning conditions 
among the Negroes in the Southern States. There are 
many white people of Boston who know practically 
nothing about the Negro in their own city, but who 
nevertheless become violently prejudiced against him, 
as the result of glaring newspaper reports of brutal 
crimes, superstitious orgies, and the like, said to have 
taken place somewhere in the Black Belt. Another 
contingent are adversely influenced by things which 
they hear from white Southerners, regarding the al- 
leged ignorance, shiftlessness, and depravity of the 
Negroes in that part of the country. Still others, who 
happen for one reason or another to visit the South, 
return with an unfavorable verdict respecting the 
Negro in Boston, which is based entirely on snap-shot 
glimpses of the conditions of this race in, say, Ala- 
bama or Mississippi. 

The third element in continuing and furthering preju- 
dice, consists of superficial observation of the Negro 
in the Boston community itself. Only a slight fraction 
of the city's white inhabitants have even a cursory 
knowledge of the actual facts pertaining to its Negro 
population. The great majority of the former know 
the latter only from seeing them in the hotels, as 
menials, dealing with them in their homes, as serv- 
ants, making an occasional curious excursion to a 
Negro church, or passing now and then through a 
Negro district; — and almost always, it must be said, 
with their eyes and ears open for something to make 
fun of, or to censure. Judgment arrived at in this hap- 
hazard fashion — and in such an attitude of mind 



424 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

— can hardly be considered as either just or depend- 
able. 

These prejudicial influences, operating to exaggerate 
and distort the Negro's actual points of past and pres- 
ent inferiority, have largely produced both a survival, 
and to some extent an increase, of that antipathy 
toward the Negro which had its rise in former years, 
when the conditions among this race were far different 
from, and far below, those which at present hold true. 

Leaving this side of the situation, for the moment, 
note may be taken of certain other influences, of a 
different character, which are working in exactly the 
opposite direction from those that have just been 
mentioned. 

The first of these is to be found in the increase 
both of individual Negroes of marked ability and 
worth of character, and of white people who are 
brought into contact with such individuals. Under 
these circumstances, as a rule, any previously existing 
prejudice on the part of these particular white persons 
is appreciably reduced, so far as regards its exhibition 
with reference to these particular Negroes. Mention 
of many individual Negroes of this grade has been made 
in the foregoing account, and brief autobiographical 
sketches have been given of a few whose records are 
typical. In the case of the latter, the reader must have 
been struck by the fact that next to no complaint was 
made of any sufferings on account of prejudice; but 
that, on the contrary, the unanimous testimony of 
these individuals was to the effect that, in their own 
experience, they had for the most part succeeded, by 
dint of tact and the demonstration of capacity, in over- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 425 

coming such antipathy. White people who come to 
know Negroes of this kind usually find that they do not 
feel toward them as they do toward the Negro in the 
mass, or in the abstract, "He is different from the rest," 
is the way they put it. But in the total, these Negroes 
who are " different" constitute a very substantial and 
constantly growing number; while the members of the 
other race who are thrown into more or less association 
with them form a total still larger and still more 
rapidly increasing. Thus, it is evident, a considerable 
leavening influence is at work. 

And thereby arises the second factor of similar but 
broader effect. Individual Negroes, of the character 
which has been described, not only overcome antip- 
athy in their own cases, but also, by their example, 
blaze the way for others of the race to follow in 
their steps, while at the same time they help to lessen 
any prejudice which these others may encounter. For 
it is improbable that white people can feel little or no 
aversion toward particular Negroes, without eventu- 
ally coming to feel somewhat less aversion toward 
the Negroes as a race. These particular white peo- 
ple, moreover, can hardly fail, by force of word and 
act, to influence others in the same direction. After 
this manner, the number of white people whose atti- 
tude toward the Negro becomes favorably modified, 
is still further increased. 

The third factor in reducing prejudice grows out of 
the two already remarked, but is of a more general 
nature. When white people are once brought to recog- 
nize ability and accomplishment on the part of par- 
ticular Negroes, they are more likely to reflect that 



426 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

such individual attainment really bears witness to 
the latent capacity of the Negro in general; and they 
are also more disposed to look for and discover the 
progress which the Negro people as a whole are mak- 
ing. So marked has this progress become at many 
points, indeed, that it is beginning of itself to compel 
recognition, even on the part of an increasing number 
of persons whose eyes have not been opened by indi- 
vidual examples. In proportion as people become aware 
of the Negro's advance, their attitude toward him 
cannot fail to become more favorable. 

It appears, therefore, that as regards the prejudice 
against the Negro, there have in recent years been two 
The Two opposite tendencies. The more apparent 

Tendeucies ^^£ thcsc has bccu au incrcasc of prejudice 

against the mass of the Negroes, on the part of the 
mass of the other race. The attitude thus exhibited 
is based upon distant rather than close acquaintance 
with the facts, is impulsive or impressionistic rather 
than deliberately reasoned, and is undiscriminating 
as between individuals. It puts all Negroes in the 
same category. The counter-tendency consists of a 
decrease of prejudice, as respects both the constantly 
growing number of Negroes of demonstrated ability 
and also the Negroes as a race in proportion to their 
general progress, on the part of the likewise constantly 
growing numl^er of white people who have an oppor- 
tunity to observe such individual Negroes, and of 
those who are becoming aware of the collective ad- 
vance the Negroes are making. The decrease of preju- 
dice in this way is based upon close acquaintance 
with the facts, deliberate judgment, and intelligent 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 427 

discrimination as between individuals of different de- 
grees of ability. 

In view of these characteristics, the first of these two 
tendencies must be regarded as the more superficial; 
the second as the more fundamental. Inasmuch as the 
superficial tendency rests largely upon the assumption 
of the Negro's continuing inferiority, while the funda- 
mental one grows out of recognition of the Negro's 
proved capacity and of his actual progress, the latter, 
though as yet of comparatively minor proportions, 
must necessarily be the one which is making the more 
substantial headway, and which is gradually overtak- 
ing the other. In spite, then, of the fact that prejudice 
against the Negro may still be somewhat on the in- 
crease so far as surface indications go, it is neverthe- 
less evident that, at bottom, this prejudice is slowly 
but surely being undermined. 

With regard, therefore, not only to the primary and 
most basic element, — the past and present inferiority 
of the Negro himself, — but also to that The Problem in 
of the resulting prejudice in the Negro's P'oceBs of Solution 
disfavor, which constitutes a secondary factor, the 
Negro problem is manifestly in process not of aggra- 
vation, but of measurable solution. This is, of course, 
very far from saying that as yet this problem is fully 
solved, or in fact anywhere near being fully solved. 
As to whether, even eventually, a complete and alto- 
gether satisfactory solution will be achieved, there is 
still, it must be acknowledged, room for question; 
while the period required for such a result to be 
worked out, granting its possibility, cannot with any 
definiteness whatever be predicted. But this much is 



428 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

certain : — that instead of growing harder, this prob- 
lem is day by day becoming somewhat less difficult. 

The problem's two elements indicate the double 
road which the Negro will have to travel in his ad- 
The Negro's vaucc iuto the f uturc. On the one hand. 

Double Road y^Q must coutinuc to make independent 

strides on his own account; while on the other, he 
must continue also to insist upon his rights and priv- 
ileges as a citizen, and thus more directly to combat 
the prejudice against him. 

Though not as a rule fully realized, the measure in 
which the possession of equal political and civil rights 
by the Negro in Boston conduces to his substantial 
progress through his own resources, is sufficiently ob- 
vious when once pointed out. Such equality not only 
instills this race with a degree of self-respect which it 
could not have as a class inferior before the law, but 
also results in enlarging, at practically every point, the 
Negro's opportunities for self-improvement. 

First and foremost, the effective right to vote, 
without restriction either in law or in fact, is of inesti- 
mable value to the Negro. It gives him a conscious- 
ness of having some responsible part in the affairs of 
the community, which otherwise he would not feel, 
and which cannot but act upon him as a general spur 
and incentive. More immediately, the franchise en- 
ables him to make concrete protest against aspirants 
for leadership who are unfriendly to his race, and 
policies which are inimical to his welfare, as well as 
making it possible for him, from a more positive and 
constructive point of view, to promote measures cal- 
culated to assist him. The ballot furthermore puts him 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 429 

in a position to demand just political recognition, in 
the form of competent public offices ; while the holding 
of such offices, and the creditable performance of the 
duties involved, not only give rise among the Negroes 
themselves to a justified confidence in their own po- 
tential abilities, but also have the effect of obtaining 
fuller recognition of their capacity on the part of the 
other race. Likewise the right to attend the same public 
schools and other educational institutions as those 
attended by the whites, renders accessible to the Negro 
advantages in securing an education which are un- 
doubtedly far superior to any separate provision likely 
to be made for him, if a policy of segregation were fol- 
lowed. The freedom of this race to reside in any local- 
ity means that a considerable proportion of its members 
are able to live and to rear their children in much more 
healthful, morally salutary, and otherwise desirable 
surroundings, than would be the case if the Negroes 
were confined within such congested and evilly en- 
vironed colonies as those which exist in many cities 
of the South. The further right to purchase real estate 
in any section supplies the Negroes with a stronger 
motive to become owners of homes, and results in their 
acquiring more and better property, than would be true 
if their holdings were restricted, as in some Southern 
cities, to certain inferior districts. 

In addition to these rather specific considerations, 
there are two whose bearing is more general. The first 
of these is, that inasmuch as the other race is still in 
a much more advanced stage of development than the 
Negro, the present extent of the latter 's contact with 
white people must be reckoned a factor of the utmost 



430 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

value in his own progress. For thus, instead of being 
forced back wholly upon himself and his own limitations, 
he is constantly enabled to derive encouragement and 
stimulus from the experience and example of the other 
race. At the same time — and this is the companion 
factor — such inter-racial association has the result 
of acquainting the other race with the Negro in a closer 
and more discriminating way, and of giving it a more 
sympathetic understanding both of the difficulties 
with which the Negro has to contend, and of the degree 
to which these difficulties are being conquered by him. 

But while thus equality of public privilege greatly 
quickens the Negro's rate of progress, the ways in 
which, as already suggested, this very self-achieve- 
ment qualifies him to gain and to hold such privilege, 
are likewise obvious. The Negro's marked adv^ance 
in point of education and refinement, to begin with, 
secures for many members of this race an amount of 
helpful association with the other race which they 
could not possibly obtain if ignorant and uncouth. 
The good appearance, as regards dress and demeanor, 
which all but the poorest element of the Negroes in 
Boston usually present, obtains them admittance, and 
thus establishes a precedent for their admittance, in 
many places of semi-public character, such as theaters, 
churches, settlements, educational and other institu- 
tions, from which, were they a class of ragamuffins and 
rowdies, they would be effectually shut out. 

It is the economic progress that the Negro is making, 
however, which is proving the surest instrument in 
maintaining and extending his liberties. In Boston, 
as is the case in most American communities, affairs 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 431 

regulate themselves very largely on a simple business 
basis of sale and purchase, with material means, rather 
than race or color, as the determining element. The 
fact that the Negro is steadily becoming better able to 
pay for privileges is his best guarantee of possessing 
these privileges. Restaurants and theaters, for in- 
stance, find that a Negro's money goes as far as a white 
man's toward profits. A cab driver deems it wiser to 
pick up a fare from a Negro than to let his vehicle 
stand idle. Shops of all kinds, even the most select, 
see no good reason for declining to sell their wares 
to members of this race. Banks draw no color line in 
accepting deposits. In the matter of residence in superior 
white neighborhoods, very frequently it is only by pur- 
chasing property in the locality, at a liberal figure, 
that the first few Negroes gain an entrance and thus 
make entry easier for others. Negro professional and 
business men could not operate among white competi- 
tors, and bid for white patronage, were they not able 
to pay the substantial rents which prevail in such dis- 
tricts. And just as white people are willing to sell to 
Negroes if there is profit in so doing, likewise they are 
willing to buy from them if they can be sure of obtain- 
ing equally good or better commodities. The under- 
lying reason why constantly increasing numbers of Ne- 
groes are obtaining higher grade employment, among 
white workmen, is because in a market where the supply 
of satisfactory workmen is generally less than the de- 
mand, these particular Negroes are able to do this par- 
ticular work satisfactorily. It is here that the immense 
strategic value of industrial education comes in. Such 
education provides the Negroes with a commodity. 



432 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

industrial skill, which as a rule they can readily mar- 
ket at a good price. In general, moreover, the indus- 
trial advance of this race necessarily underlies its 
welfare in every other respect, including that of the 
safeguarding and extension of its rights and privi- 
leges. For without the material resources thus pro- 
vided, the Negro would manifestly be put at a severe 
disadvantage, in any efforts to protect and to assert 
himself. 

If independent headway through his own effort is 
thus to be in the future, as it has been in the past, the 
Racial Cohesion most fundamental factor in the Negro's 
and Race Pride ad vaucc, it clcarly follows that the Negro 
people must obtain a position of self-reliant strength 
as a racial group. As individuals, each one dependent 
solely on himself and working for himself alone, they 
cannot adequately cope with their peculiar problem. 
More than any other people in the world to-day, the 
Negroes stand in need of the mutual support and co- 
operation which comes from numbers and cohesion. 
They are not yet prepared to be received fully, or 
even in major degree, within the general fabric and 
organization of the white community. They must, 
therefore, at least for the present, evolve a fabric 
and an organization of their own. Instead of attempt- 
ing to belittle or get away from the fact of their 
race, they must, on the contrary, make as much of 
this fact as possible, using it as a rallying-call for a 
centripetal movement toward racial solidarity. 

The individual Negro will never gain the full respect 
of the other race until he first comes fully to respect 
himself. This he cannot do until his own race has 



THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO PEOPLE 433 

reached the point where he will not be ashamed, but 
will be proud, to own himself a Negro. Other racial 
stocks — as, for example, the Slavs, Celts, or Teu- 
tons — feel no aspersion, but only the pride of histor- 
ical achievement, in these corresponding designations. 
The Negro affords the one solitary case of which the 
opposite is true. And the reason for this is, that as yet 
the Negro has comparatively little history which war- 
rants pride. Therefore, he must set to work to make 
a history for himself. He must have a creditable past 
upon which to build a creditable future. 

That the Negro is already moving very distinctly 
in the direction of cohesion as a race is the most promis- 
ing feature of his progress. The very reason why the 
gospel of self-achievement, as preached by Booker T. 
Washington, has taken such a deep and permanent hold 
upon the Negro people, is because it appeals to this 
call of race. The ways in which, impelled by this mo- 
tive, the Negroes are beginning to draw together and 
to pull together, in the social, the religious, the politi- 
cal, and the economic fields, have already been suflS- 
ciently indicated.^ At length, moreover, as the com- 

1 At the present time a committee, which has grown out of certain 
activities of the Robert Gould Shaw House, previously mentioned, 
and which contains representatives of both races, is considering and 
undertaking to promote a specific scheme of industrial betterment 
which calls this element of racial cohesion into play. The plan in 
view is to try to get a substantial number of the Negroes to with- 
hold their patronage from such places, and especially department 
stores, as absolutely refuse to employ Negroes in positions above the 
menial grade, and particularly as salesgirls and salesmen; and at the 
same time to give their patronage to places which will consent to 
employ Negroes, if only to a very limited extent, in such positions. 
The expectation is that even if, at the outset, only a few members of 
this race are thus employed, gradually both the employers and the 



434 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

bined result of the growing sense of community among 
themselves, the recognition of their actual past and jjre- 
sent accomplishment as a people, and the recalling 
and celebration of events related to their history, the 
Negroes are commencing to show the germs of a gen- 
uine pride of race, and to give some evidence that they 
are coming to look upon the name "Negro" as not 
altogether a term of reproach. 

The development of the Negro people as a distinct 
racial group, with traditions, leaders, and ideals of 
Articulation into their owu, will ruu not counter, but 
the Community parallel to the considerably slower pro- 
cess of the Negro's articulation into the common life of 
the community. Though it may appear paradoxical 
to say that the surest way in which the Negro will suc- 
ceed in overcoming the prevailing attitude in his dis- 
favor will be by becoming more and not less a Negro 
than he is to-day, this is nevertheless the truth. For 
as the Negro, in proportion to his own independent 
progress, compels increased respect for his capacity, 
the other race will gradually and naturally become 
more willing to receive him into closer association. 

This articulating process has already, indeed, 
reached a noticeably advanced stage. The fact that, 
in point of residence, the Negroes are being distributed 
among the city's white inhabitants to a constantly 
widening extent, cannot fail to promote mutual better 
acquaintance and to give rise to common interests. 
Likewise, in the ranks of industry, the interspersion 

public will cease to regard their employment in such capacities as 
impossible, and will eventually become willing to install a larger 
number. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 435 

of Negro workmen among white workmen, in both 
manual and clerical occupations, is steadily increasing. 
The proportion of the Negro professional and business 
class who are venturing to go outside those districts 
colonized by their own people, and to try their for- 
tunes among white competitors, though of course 
still small, is continually growing. Cases of office- 
sharing and even of partnership between persons of 
the two races are less of a rarity now than in former 
years, while instances of Negro proprietors or of re- 
sponsible employees having white workmen in their 
charge are oftener to be found. General trade con- 
tact between these two elements of the population is 
gradually extending, while through the use of banks, 
the ownership of property, and the paying of taxes, 
the Negro is being linked, more and more substantially, 
to the economic interests of the community. 

Citizens of both races vote together at the same vot- 
ing places and on an equal basis. Through represen- 
tation on the various party committees, the Negroes 
have some part in the management of party affairs, 
and at all political conventions Negro delegates are to 
be seen. Especially under the civil service, an increas- 
ing quota of Negroes are serving in public positions 
side by side with officials of the other race. With regard 
to religious activity, though on the whole the attend- 
ance of Negroes at white churches is diminishing, yet 
as previously noted there are some churches which 
are marked exceptions to this rule; and, on a broader 
scale, cases of white churches, especially in the sub- 
urbs, which contain a few earnest and well-regarded 
Negro members, are coming to constitute a significant 



436 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

total. The Negro churches are admitted into the gen- 
eral denominational organizations, Negro delegates 
participate in the general meetings, and no color line 
is drawn on the various ministers' societies. In the 
public schools white and Negro children work and 
play together in apparent innocence of any barrier. 
These memories and impressions of childhood are not 
easily blotted out. White youth of high-school and 
college age find Negro youth often their equals and 
sometimes their superiors, both in scholarship and ath- 
letic prowess. A Negro principal, half a dozen teachers, 
and several school officials, represent the Negro on the 
side of substantial contribution to the city's educa- 
tional advance. 

Perhaps it may be said, however, that all such con- 
tact as this between the two races ends simply with 
itself, and neither signifies nor leads to social inter- 
course of such unconditioned character as that which 
takes place between the various elements of the white 
population. In other words, it may be held that 
though the Negro is in the community, and closely 
related to it, he is not by any means an integral part 
of it. This distinction is, without doubt, a real and 
vital one. But it is at the same time so subtle, in 
many respects, as to render the question raised by it 
extremely difficult, if not at this stage practically im- 
possible, to answer with finality. Viewed against the 
background of the prevailing prejudice against the 
Negro people and the still outstanding fact of their 
separateness in the main, whatever association there 
is between the Negro and the white portion of the pop- 
ulation tends easily and plausibly, of course, to appear 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 437 

as something of an altogether f)eculiar and rigidly 
limited nature. But, on the other hand, may it not be 
that these perfectly obvious elements of prejudice and 
separateness loom so large and so near as to bias and 
distort the observer's vision, and to render him in- 
capable of perceiving, in their true light and at their 
full value, any facts of an opposite significance? The 
writer feels confident, out of years of experience, 
that, as regards all except possibly the most intimate 
personal relations, no such necessarily fixed barrier 
between the Negro and the white man, as that which 
has just been suggested, actually exists; that there is 
to-day a substantial measure of genuine, man-to-man 
association between members of these two races; and 
that in the future such association, based upon a fellow- 
feeling of human brotherhood which strikes deeper 
than any sense of difference, will continue to increase, 
tending eventually to make the Negro people an inner 
and component part of the general community. 

As over against his present deficiencies, which, as 
already indicated, are gradually being reduced, the 
Negro will bring as his contribution to The Negro's 
the community and to the American contribution 
complex, certain qualities of great value, of which, at 
least in latent form, he is either peculiarly or in supe- 
rior degree endowed. 

The inborn love of music, the tropically fertile 
imagination, and the natural eloquence of this race 
are gifts which are rich in promise. Already the Negro 
is adjudged to have given this country, in the old 
plantation melodies, its most distinctive folk-songs. 
In the future he may be expected to express himself 



438 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

notably in all the higher realms of musical composi- 
tion and rendition. Nor is prophetic vision required 
to predict that some of America's poets and most 
powerful orators will emerge from this people. The 
deep religious fervor of the Negro, when raised to a 
plane above that of untaught emotionalism, will no 
doubt yield great preachers and religious leaders, and 
perhaps in time produce a Negro church which will 
set an example of heartfelt Christianity to its sister 
churches of pale-face hue. The Negro's capacity for 
taking things easily, his innate cheerfulness, and 
that drolly irresistible humor which is all his own, are 
reinforcements that will stand in good stead a nation 
which, from over-intensity of application and insuf- 
ficiency of relaxation, is in some danger of falling vic- 
tim to nerves. The spontaneous sociability and gre- 
gariousness which characterize the Negro people in 
such high degree are, finally, attributes which may 
qualify this race for an important role in an era of the 
world's progress when the individualistic and competi- 
tive motives are clearly being replaced by others of a 
more social and humanitarian aspect. 

These suggested probabilities may, of course, strike 
some people as only the most distant and visionary 
speculations; — for the reason that, in Africa and Amer- 
ica together, the Negro has had a long time in which 
to develop any inherent potentialities, and yet is still 
so far in the rear. It is at least within the limits of pos- 
sibility, however, that — according to a well-recog- 
nized principle in biology — the eventual development 
and attainment of this race will be proportionate to 
the amplitude of its period of infancy. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 439 

There is now doubtless a final query in the reader's 
mind. It is this: — Are the foregoing conclusions and 
predictions, with regard to the Negro The Negro 
problem and its solution, confined strictly '° *^® ^*'^''"* 
to the conditions which obtain in Boston ; or, if not, 
to what extent are they capable of general application, 
with reference to the country as a whole? 

In reply to this query, the writer will say that, While 
the specific task before him has been the analysis of the 
Negro's situation in Boston, he has at the same time 
kept constantly in view the purpose of getting at the 
subject in a suflSciently broad and fundamental way 
to make the chief conclusions representative. While 
holding himself accountable only with respect to Bos- 
ton, so far as any pretension to actual and detailed 
proof is concerned, he nevertheless ventures to sub- 
mit, suggestively, that the problem of the Negro is 
essentially the same elsewhere, not only in the North 
but in the South as well ; and that the conclusions which 
have here been drawn may, therefore, be extended to 
apply, in substance, to the position of the Negro 
people throughout the nation. 

Certainly in all other localities it will be found that, 
as in Boston, the two vital elements in this problem 
are the Negro's backwardness or inferiority of develop- 
ment, and the prevailing prejudice against him. As to 
the problem's solution, it would appear that elsewhere 
also this is being worked out by the same double pro- 
cess : — the progress of the Negro himself, on the one 
hand, and the modification of the prevailing attitude 
toward him, on the other. In Boston, and to a lesser 
degree in other parts of the North, it is the Negro's 



440 THE NEGRO IN BOSTON 

advance along lines of education, refinement, and in- 
tellectual accomplishment, together with the excep- 
tional attainment of individuals, which stands out 
most clearly. In the South, on the contrary, the agri- 
cultural and industrial headway of the Negro people, 
and their general forward movement in the mass, are 
most strikingly in evidence. With regard to present 
signs of any undermining of the prejudice in the Negro's 
disfavor, while, of course, such a tendency is much 
farther advanced in the North than it is in the South, 
its beginnings are nevertheless plainly discernible in 
the latter section. The majority of persons who are 
studying Southern conditions at first hand, testify to 
the fact that the proportion of Southern white people 
who are seeking to cultivate relations of mutual help- 
fulness and amity between the two races, though com- 
paratively small as yet, is constantly increasing. It is 
true, furthermore, that while the various common 
interests which are operating to bind the two races to- 
gether are more apparent in the North, they are in 
fact even more substantial in the South. For there 
the Negroes, by reason of their very numbers, the 
major share of the labor of the community which they 
perform, and their extensive ownership of farms, are 
relatively a much more essential factor in the com- 
munity's life and well-being. 

Because the great mass of this race have always been 
and still are resident in the Southern States, and be- 
cause the influences drawing and forcing them to- 
gether are there much more powerful, it is probable 
that the Negroes will develop in the South, sooner 
than in the North, strength of organization as a dis- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 441 

tinct and self-reliant group; while, for the same rea- 
sons, it will probably take them much longer in the 
South to become satisfactorily articulated with the 
other elements of the population. 

But South and North the final outcome will be the 
same. A people grown up, from a forlorn and help- 
less band of slaves brought hither from the African 
jungle, into ten millions of free citizens, constituting 
a tenth part of the total inhabitants of the United 
States to-day; a people which has been in this coun- 
try from the beginning, and has had an honorable 
and, indeed, a vital part, both in its establishment 
and preservation by ways of war, and in its manifold 
upbuilding by ways of peace : — this people will event- 
ually attain the position at once of self-respect and 
worthy recognition. In new and fuller ways the two 
contrasted races, which chiefly go to make the Ameri- 
can nation, must and will find common cause. 

"Both formed thy bulwark since thy life began, 
And both together still must work thy plan." 



THE END 



APPENDIX 

ARTICLE I 
GARRISON AND THE LIBERATOR 

William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, 
Massachusetts, not far from Boston, in 1805. He was of 
humble parentage. At the age of nine, with next to no regu- 
lar schooHng, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and later 
to a cabinetmaker. When he was thirteen, he obtained 
employment as an apprenticed printer on the Newburyport 
Herald. This marked the beginning of the remarkable self- 
education, especially in the mastery of language, which he 
eventually achieved. 

In 1826, shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship 
on the Herald, he became the editor and publisher of the 
Newburyport Free Press, exhibited marked independence in 
this capacity, and incidentally printed the first verses of 
the poet and future Abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier. 
Later in the same year, he left Newburyport and went to 
Boston, where, while supporting himself at his trade of 
printing, he displayed his fighting spirit by making a youth- 
ful but not ineffective insurgent speech, at a political con- 
vention, and by engaging later in some consequent news- 
paper polemics. 

In 1828 he became editor of the National Philanthropist, of 
Boston, a paper devoted to the cause of temperance and 
other reforms. His early connection with this publication 
doubtless developed in Garrison the inherent impulse toward 
reforming which soon became the most distinguishing ele- 
ment of his character. His first expression of interest in 
slavery conditions appears to have been in the form of a 
comment, in the second number of the Philanthropist under 
his editorship, upon the futility of the attempts of the South 
to prevent teaching the slaves even simple reading and writ- 
ing. The budding antipathy toward slavery, thus indicated. 



444 APPENDIX 

was greatly furthered by his meeting that same year with the 
Quaker, Benjamin Lundy, who was ahnost the only militant 
anti-slavery worker of that period, and who had established 
a paper called the Genius of Universal Emancipation, for the 
advocacy of gradual abolition. Garrison's association with 
and assistance of Lundy, during the latter's two visits to 
Boston to arouse public sentiment, resulted in his engage- 
ment, in the spring of 1829 (following a brief but highly 
creditable term of service as editor of the Journal of the 
Times, at Bennington, Vermont, during which his progress 
anti-slaveryward was evidenced by constant advocacy of 
gradual abolition), as associate editor of the Genius, then 
published at Baltimore. 

On the way to his new post, Garrison delivered a stirring 
anti-slavery address, on Independence Day, at the Park 
Street Church in Boston. In that address, however, he still 
went only so far as to urge gradual abolition. But by the 
time he arrived at Baltimore, several weeks later, he had 
definitely reached the conclusion that to rest content with 
gradual abolition would allow slavery to drag on intermin- 
ably, and that to demand immediate and total abolition was 
the only sure way of bringing the evil to a certain and early 
end. Lundy not being ready to take such an extreme stand, 
it was agreed that each editor should express his own views 
over his own signature; with the result that in the very first 
number Garrison declared his attitude. His uncompromis- 
ingness on this point and his radicalism on other reforms led 
forthwith to a steady falling-off in the Genius' subscription 
list. At the end of six months the paper was practically 
bankrupt, and the partnership was dissolved. Garrison had 
meanwhile published an article, exposing complicity in the 
domestic slave trade on the part of a shipowner of his native 
town of Newburyport, which was adjudged libelous by the 
court, and for the authorship of which, on his inability to 
pay the fine imposed, he was cast into jail. After a durance of 
forty-nine days, he was liberated through the payment of his 
fine by a wealthy philanthropist * of New York City, who had 
been moved to this action by reading an account of his trial 
and imprisonment. 

> Arthur Tappan, who later became a leading Abolitionist. 



APPENDIX 445 

Following his release, some effort was made by friends of 
Lundy and himself to have the Genius reestablished on the 
former basis, but without result. Garrison then determined 
upon the publication of an anti-slavery and general reform 
paper of his own, and publicly announced that at an early 
date he would begin to issue such a paper from Washington, 
He left Baltimore for the North, and after delivering several 
anti-slavery lectures on the way, arrived in Boston, October 
1, 1830. The Boston Transcript of the following day had a 
brief editorial referring to his coming and acknowledging his 
pioneer service in a cause which, however, it went on to 
predict, "he could never hope to see perfected." 

In Boston, Garrison at once tried to find a hall for an anti- 
slavery meeting. The fact that he was unsuccessful in his 
quest till he advertised in the newspapers, and that then he 
was able to secure only a hall used by a group of avowed 
infidels, showed the unwillingness which at that time pre- 
vailed in Boston, as elsewhere in the North, to have the 
slavery question agitated, — an unwillingness to which even 
the churches, except for a scattering few, were parties. A 
meeting was held on the evening of October 15. The follow- 
ing extracts from an account by a member of the small audi- 
ence convey some impression of Garrison's personality and 
convincing power of speech, and of the degree to which he 
was absorbed by his cause: ^ 

"Presently the young man ^ arose, modestly, but with an 
air of calm determination, and delivered such a lecture as he 
only, I believe, at that time, could have written; for he only 
had had his eyes so anointed that he could see that outrages 
perpetrated upon Africans were wrongs done to our com- 
mon humanity. . . . Never before was I so affected by the 
speech of man. When he had ceased speaking I said to those 
around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he 
will shake our nation to its centre, but he will shake slavery 
out of it.' " 

The antipathy or, at the least, apathy toward the anti- 
slavery propaganda, which Garrison had encountered in 

1 The Reverend Samuel J. May, who became one of Garrison's most loyal sup- 
porters. 

> He was then only twenty-four years of age. 



446 APPENDIX 

Boston, convinced him that the North must be aroused before 
there could be any hope of converting the South. The first 
and the several succeeding meetings held in that city gained 
him a few daring followers. He therefore decided to publish 
his paper not from Washington but from Boston. Though 
utterly without funds himself, he was enabled to carry out 
his purpose by the formation of a timely partnership with an 
old associate of the printing bench. ^ Dismissing counsels of 
moderation, he gave his paper the plain and unequivocal title 
of The Liberator.'^ 



ARTICLE II 

THE NEGRO'S PROGRESS IN THE ABOLITION PERIOD 

General Advance est Boston, 1830-65 » 

The awakening of the Negroes in Boston, which the 
Abolition Movement effected, was evidenced in a number of 
ways and by a number of events concurrent with and related 
to that Movement, and yet distinct from it. 

One of the earliest and most important of these develop- 
ments was the demand that Negro children be admitted into 
the general public schools. In addition to the separate pri- 
mary school opened by the city in 1820 in response to a peti- 
tion from the Negroes themselves, another school, apparently 
of grammar grade, had been established in the North End 
in 1831, but had been discontinued in 1835 on account of 
meager attendance, owing to the facts that by that time only 
comparatively few Negroes were left in that quarter, and 
that those few were of inferior quality. In the latter year the 
Smith School was erected in a court off Joy Street.^ The 

* Isaac Knapp. 

* The foregoing facts have been taken from William Lloyd Garrison, The Story oj 
nil Life, Told by His Children, vol. i, chaps, i-viii. That book, in four volumes, is 
not only the best biography of Garrison, but also the fullest history of the Abolition 
Movement. 

» This more detailed account supplements the brief statement made at the begin- 
ning of chapter III. 

* Report of Primary School Committee, June 15, 1846. The old building still 
stands, and is to-day used as headquarters by a Negro G.A.R. Company (Robert 
A. Bell Post, 134). 



APPENDIX 447 

school took its name from a white man, Abrel Smith, who 
left to the city a legacy the income from which, amounting 
to $200 yearly, was to go toward the support of a school for 
Negroes. The parents of the children were held to pay 12| 
cents a week for each child. In 1843, a primary school, 
which replaced the one previously used, was started in the 
North End.^ In 1840, however, a petition signed by Garri- 
son, Phillips, Francis Jackson, Henry W. Williams, and a 
number of Negroes led by the journalist and author, William 
C. Nell, son of William G. Nell, the tailor, was sent to the 
School Committee, asking that the public schools be thrown 
open to Negro children. In 1846, a similar petition was sub- 
mitted by George Putnam, a Negro, and eighty-five others. 
The Primary School Committee, in reporting adversely on 
this petition, made a statement that brought out a division 
of opinion, on the matter of segregation, which since that 
time has assumed far larger proportions and more general 
importance. "Our inquiries into the origin and history of 
separate schools," they said, " have also convinced us that 
the leading motive for their establishment was precisely the 
opposite of a design to degrade the colored people, as has 
been so frequently charged upon them. The colored children 
in Boston possessed equal rights with others as every one 
knows, yet very few, indeed, often not more than two or 
three in all, attended the public schools. It was next to 
impossible to bring them in. Benevolent individuals under- 
took, therefore, to sustain special separate schools for them. 
And it was with great difficulty for a long time that they 
could be brought even into these schools. The labor of get- 
ting them in was found to be far greater than teaching them 
when once brought in. It was by the exertion of benevolent 
white persons, in connection with the most intelligent of the 
colored people, that this class of children were brought under 
school instruction in any considerable numbers — an object 
which it was found impossible to accomplish but by means of 
separate schools. The question arises by what means the 
views and feelings of the colored people in reference to these 
special schools for their benefit have been so mysteriously 
changed." ^ 

> Report of Primary School Committee, June 15, 1846. 
' Report oj Primary School Committee, June 15, 1846. 



448 APPENDIX 

In 1849, Jonas Clark and 227 others renewed the attack. 
A Negro-School-Abolition party, consisting of both Negroes 
and whites, was formed and set itself three tasks.* The first 
of these was to break up the existing Smith School. The 
agitators even went so far as to surround the school, at its 
opening that fall, and to make use of every means, short of 
actual physical violence, to prevent the children from going 
in. As a second expedient, they started an opposition school, 
open to white as well as Negro children, and taught at first 
by the Reverend Daniel Foster, a Negro preacher. But their 
principal effort was to get the Supreme Court of the State to 
declare separate schools unconstitutional. To this end, 
Benjamin F. Roberts, in behalf of his five-year-old daughter 
Sarah, brought suit against the city for damages on account 
of the refusal to receive her in the general public schools. 
The case was argued December 4, 1849, with Charles Sumner 
as first counsel for the plaintiff, and Robert Morris, the Negro 
lawyer, as assistant counsel. ^ Though the decision of the 
court was adverse, the airing which the question received 
was a long step toward ultimate victory. Five years later, a 
white lawyer, George F. Williams, made an able report to the 
city in favor of doing away with separate schools. This 
report, and a petition signed by nearly one thousand five 
hundred persons, Negro and white, from all parts of the 
State, paved the way for action by the Legislature, and a law 
abolishing separate schools was adopted April 28, 1855.^ 
The text of the law was as follows : — 

"Section 1. In determining the qualifications of scholars 
to be admitted into any public school or any district school in 
this Commonwealth, no distinction shall be made on account 
of the race, color, or religious opinions, of the applicant or 
scholar. 

"Section 2. Any child who, on account of his race, color, 
or religious opinions, shall be excluded from any public or 
district school in this Commonwealth, for admission to 
which he may be otherwise qualified, shall recover damages 
therefor in an action for tort," etc., etc. 

^ An address before the colored citizens of Boston in opposition to the abolition of 
colored schools, by Thomas B. Smith, December 24, 1849. 
> Sarah C. Roberts vs. City of Boston, December 4, 1849. 
8 Laws uf Massachusetts, 1855, chap. 256. 



APPENDIX 449 

A celebratory meeting of Negroes and whites, presided 
over by John T. Hilton, a leading Negro AboHtionist, was 
held in December, 1855, especially in honor of William C. 
Nell, as the Negro to whom chief credit was due for the final 
result of this campaign. Mr. Nell told how, as a boy, while 
attending the Smith School, and having been one of the Ne- 
gro children to receive rewards of merit, — which were not 
Franklin medals, as in the case of the white children, but 
orders for small copies of Franklin's Autobiography, — he 
had contrived to get in as a waiter's assistant at the meet- 
ing where the prizes were being given to the white children. 
The principal of the schools, Samuel T. Armstrong, had 
whispered to him, — "You ought to be here with the other 
boys." "The impression made on my mind by this day's 
experience deepened into a solemn vow that, God helping 
me, I would do my best to hasten the day when the color 
of the skin would be no barrier to equal school rights." 
Besides Mr. Nell, the speakers were Garrison, Phillips, and 
Charles W. Slack. Mr. Slack stated that, since the new 
regime had gone into effect, the teachers in the schools 
where colored children were most numerous testified that 
they were as neatly dressed, and as gifted in application and 
understanding, as the white children.^ 

Another sign of the awakening of the Negroes was the 
petition sent to the Legislature in 1851, signed among others 
by Nell, Remond, Hayden and Joshua B. Smith, who had 
come to Boston as a fugitive from North Carolina in 1847, 
asking for the erection of a monument in memory of Crispus 
Attucks.2 That request was complied with thirty-seven years 
later. As a further development in the direction of budding 
independence, the Adelphic Union Library Association 
was formed about 1845, and maintained for approximately 
ten years. The Negroes were shy about going to public insti- 
tutions and meetings. As their children were excluded from 
the schools, so they themselves did not feel free to take ad- 
vantage of such opportunities as were afforded by libraries 
and open lecture courses, and indeed their presence in such 

1 Proceedings of meeting held in Boston, December, 1855, to celebrate Abolition of 
Colored Schools. 

» W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots of the Revolution. 



450 APPENDIX 

places and on such occasions was obviously not welcome. 
This library association of their own served both to accustom 
them to make use of self-educational facilities and also to 
demonstrate to the whites their sincere desire for such oppor- 
tunities. A number of young white men of high standing lent 
their assistance to the enterprise. Withal, an appreciable 
change of public sentiment was effected, and by the end of 
that decade the presence of Negroes at public lectures, 
theaters, and the like, excited comparatively little adverse 
comment. 

In addition to the writings of William Wells Brown and 
Frederick Douglass,^ there appeared, in 1852, William C. 
Nell's Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 
1812, and in 1855 his larger and more complete book, 
Colored Patriots of the Revolution. The volume of Miscel- 
laneous Poems, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, one of the 
most prominent Negro women Abolitionists, who was much 
of her time in Boston, was published in 1854. 

Simultaneously with the advent of these Negro writers 
came the admission to the Bar and to the Medical Associa- 
tion of Negro lawyers and physicians. The first Negro 
lawyer to be admitted to the Bar in the United States ap- 
pears to have been Macon B. Allen, who passed the examina- 
tions at Worcester, Massachusetts, May 3, 1845, and who 
had been allowed to practice in Maine two years before that. 
But so far as the records show, Allen did not distinguish him- 
self. The first Negro to make an impression as a lawyer was 
Robert Morris, a remarkable man with a remarkable history. 
His grandfather, Cumono, a native African, was carried to 
Ipswich, not far from Boston, as a boy. There he won the 
esteem of the citizens, and one of the byways of the town was 
called, after him, Cumono Lane. Robert's father, York 
Morris, moved at an early age to Salem, and there Robert 
was born, in June, 1823. He worked as a table-boy in the 
home of a family named King, whom the family of Ellis 
Gray Loring, one of the leading lawyers in Boston at that 
time, were accustomed to visit. Mr. Loring was attracted by 
the boy, and took him into his household as a servant. 
Several years later, he gave him a chance to show what he 

' Referred to in chapters ii and in. 



APPENDIX 451 

could do as oflBce-boy, and so satisfactorily did Robert per- 
form his new duties that his employer, seeing that the young 
man possessed unusual ability, helped him in the study of 
law. His progress accorded with his promise, and in Febru- 
ary, 1847, he was admitted to the Bar. 

He has himself described his first case in court: "There 
was something in the courtroom that morning that made me 
feel like a giant. The courtroom was filled with colored 
people, and I could see, expressed on the faces of every one of 
them, a wish that I might win the first case that had ever 
been tried before a jury by a colored attorney in this country. 
At last my case was called; I went to the work and tried it 
for all it was worth; and until the evidence was all in, the 
argument on both sides made, the judge's charge concluded, 
and the case given to the jury, I spared no pains to win. 
The jury after being out a short time returned, and when the 
foreman in reply to the clerk answered that the jury had 
found for the plaintiff, my heart bounded up and my people 
in the courtroom acted as if they would shout for joy." 

The other Negro lawyers admitted to the Bar in Boston 
before 1865 were William J. Watkins, John S. Rock, and 
Edward Garrison Walker, David Walker's son. The first 
Negro physician to be taken into the Massachusetts Medical 
Association was J. V. De Grasse, in 1854. John S. Rock, 
born in New Jersey in 18'25, was admitted soon afterwards. 
He was a man of recognized exceptional scholarship and 
literary ability, and on a number of occasions was invited to 
speak before distinguished white audiences, — twice before 
the State Legislature. Ill health compelled him to give up the 
practice of medicine, and he studied law and was admitted to 
practice — as above noted — in 1861. A Negro, Edward M. 
Bannister, had forced an entrance also into the domain of art, 
and had won more than local distinction as a portrait painter.^ 

The growth of the Negro population during this period, ^ 
coming at the same time with the general awakening which 
has been noted, was one of the chief causes of the increase in 

' Mr. Bannister subsequently became the principal founder of the Providence 
Art Club, which is to-day the leading art organization in Providence, Rhode Island, 
and whose membership, mostly if not wholly white, includes many of the leading 
citizens of the city and State. 

* See chapter iii for figures. 



452 APPENDIX 

the number of Negro churches, from two in 1830 to five by 
1850. The Reverend John T. Raymond was pastor of the 
old Joy Street Church, succeeding the Reverend Thomas 
Paul about 1840 and continuing till a few years before the 
war. He was a man of high character, and an active worker 
for anti-slavery and many of the principal reforms of the 
day. His successor was the brilliant John Sella Martin, who 
came to Boston in 1859, being introduced by the pastor of 
Tremont Temple, whose pulpit he filled several weeks as a 
vacation substitute. The first pastor of the A.M.E. Zion 
Church, founded in 1838, was the Reverend Jehial C. Beman, 
born in Connecticut, and whose father is said to have taken 
the name "Be-Man" after escaping from slavery. The 
Negro minister most active in the Abolition cause was the 
Reverend Leonard A. Grimes,of the Twelfth Baptist Church. 
He was born in Leesburg, Virginia, of free parents, in 1815, 
worked at many occupations in various parts of the South, 
and as a young man became an active helper for the Under- 
ground Railway. He was concerned in nearly all the stirring 
events affecting the Negro from the time of his coming to 
Boston, in 1848, till his death. 

With the founding of new churches came the formation of 
a number of Negro societies and organizations. Between 
1844 and 1848 three additional Masonic lodges, the Union, 
Rising Sun, and Celestial, were established, the original 
African lodge having become in 1808 the Prince Hall Grand 
Lodge. The first lodge of Negro Odd Fellows in Boston had 
its beginning in 1846. The first women's beneficial society in 
Boston, either white or Negro, was :hat of the United 
Daughters of Zion, organized November 6, 1845, and still 
extant. The Female Benevolent Firm, which also has 
maintained itself to the present day, was formed in 1850; 
and the National Grand Order of Brothers and Sisters of 
Love and Charity, of which there are now six lodges in 
Greater Boston, in 1863.^ 

Though the mass of the Negroes were still employed in 
menial service, there had, nevertheless, been a decided eco- 
nomic advance. Thomas B. Dalton, who appeared in the 

* Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 
pp. 282, 283. 



APPENDIX 453 

1829 directory as a bootblack, subsequently became the 
proprietor of a prosperous clothing-shop on Brattle Street, 
and accumulated property, as the provisions of his will 
later showed, to the value of nearly $50,000. With reference 
to the material progress made by the Negroes, William C. 
Nell wrote in 1855: "Boston compares favorably, in this 
respect, with larger cities in the United States. Several 
causes have combined to retard the progress of colored 
mechanics, but these are being removed, and, in a few years, 
the results will be manifest. Business and professional men 
are continually increasing. . . . The most popular gymna- 
sium galleries are in the proprietorship of J. B. Bailey ^ and 
Peyton Stewart; the prince of caterers is J. B. Smith; a den- 
tist highly recommended is J. S. Rock; a young artist in 
crayon portraits is fast winning his way to excellence and 
reputation; 2 and other equally meritorious aspirants — 
women included — are soaring to those heights that chal- 
lenge the ambition of earth's gifted citizens. Real-estate to 
the value of, at least, $200,000 is in the hands of our colored 
citizens." ^ The Negroes, in fact, owned a large proportion 
of the property in the West End district. 



ARTICLE III 

NEGRO LEADERS AFTER THE WAR 

When, with the war's close, the period of the Negro's 
freedom began, nearly all the Abolitionist leaders of that race 
in Boston were still alive, and the majority were in their 
prime. Charles Lenox Remond, born in 1810, and one of the 
pioneers, was the eldest of this strong group, and one of the 
most eloquent, having won the sobriquet of "The Colored 
Wendell Phillips." The leader, however, was Lewis Hayden. 
He had been born a slave, in 1815, and had come to Boston at 
the age of twenty-nine as a runaway; but his native intel- 
lectual ability and the exceptionally good education which he 

' Mr. Bailey was for a time boxing-master at Harvard University. 
' Edward M. Bannister, previously mentioned. 
3 W. C. Nell, Colored Patriots oj the Revolution. 



454 APPENDIX 

somehow managed to acquire are suflBciently evidenced by 
his writings on Negro Masonry.^ Hayden was a man of 
compelling qualities and of a nature which would not brook 
opposition. With the Negroes he held a position almost of 
dictator, and with the whites he was the accepted represent- 
ative of his people. His home remained a common meeting- 
place for councils affecting his race.'^ Joshua B. Smith, who, 
before he became a caterer, worked in the Sliaw household, 
was one of the prime movers in initiating, in the autumn of 
1865, the movement for the collection of private subscrip- 
tions for a monument to Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty- 
fourth; — which resulted, in 1897, when $'23,000 had been 
secured, in the erection of the present Memorial. George L. 
Ruffin, born in Richmond in 1838 of free parents, had come 
to Boston ia 1853, and after earning his livelihood for some 
years as a barber, took a course at the Harvard Law School, 
and subsequently entered the law office of Harvey Jewell. 
Mark de Mortie, a tailor and shoe-dealer, who had come to 
Boston from Virginia in 1853, and George T. Downing, who, 
though he did not live in Boston, frequently went there,' 
were others of the "Old Guard," — the majority of whom, as 
well as some of those mentioned here, have already been 
named in other connections. 

In addition to this group of men, a number of women 
continued to take an active part in affairs. Previous refer- 
ence has been made to Eliza Gardner, who when the war 
ended was still a young woman of thirty-four, but in the 
forefront of good endeavor for her people's welfare. A co- 
worker was Mrs. Arianna C. Sparrow, who had come to 
Boston in 1852 with her mother, the latter one of the women 
after whom the character of Eliza, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, was 
modeled. Another zealous member of this company was 
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, wife of George L. Ruffin. Mrs. 
Ruffin, of mingled French, English, American, Indian, and 

' Caste among Masonn; Address before Prince Hall Grand Lodge. Grand Lodge 
Jurisdictional Claim. Masonrt/ among Colored Men in Massachusetts. 

' In the house at 66 Phillips Street, the room in which those frequent councils 
were held is still kept with everything as it used to be, and is proudly shown to 
visitors by the present tenant. 

' Downing hud a remarkable history. See the biography by his daughter, Mrs. 
S. I. N. Washington, printed in 1010 by the Milne Printers, Newport, Uhode Island. 



APPENDIX 455 

African descent, was born in Boston in 1842, and was mar- 
ried in 1858. During the war, as a girl, she assisted in the 
sending of sanitary supplies to the soldiers; and immediately 
after the war she organized the Kansas Relief Association, 
which sent clothing and money to the Negro refugees who 
were colonizing parts of Kansas. 

The ranks of the foregoing leaders, and of the others who 
had taken up their abode in Boston before, during, or imme- 
diately after the war, were reinforced by a number of later 
recruits from without. Reference will be made only to those 
who identified themselves closely with the propaganda for 
equal rights. Among such, who came in the first decade 
following the return of peace, were James Still, from New 
Jersey; W. C. Lane, from North Carolina; H. Gordon Street, 
from the West Indies; William H. Plummer, from Virginia; 
Julius B. Chappelle, from Florida; James H. Wolff and 
Archibald H. Grimke. Still and Lane were physicians. 
Street a journalist, Chappelle a barber, Plummer, Wolff, and 
Grimke lawyers. Wolff was born at Holderness, New 
Hampshire, in 1847, acquired his academic education at 
Kimball Union Academy and the New Hampshire State 
College, and studied law in the office of Hon. D. W. Gooch 
and at the Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the 
Bar in 1875. Archibald H. Grimke and his brother, Francis 
James Grimke, were the children, by a Negro mother, of one 
of the sons of Judge John F. Grimke, of the Supreme Court of 
South Carolina. Their father's sisters, Angelina and Sarah 
Grimke, were famous Abolitionists and reformers before the 
war, and were often heard on Boston platforms. When these 
sisters discovered the facts concerning the parentage of the 
two boys, who were then in Lincoln University, Pennsyl- 
vania, where by heroic saving their mother had contrived to 
send them, they forthwith acknowledged them as nephews; 
Angelina Grimke, who had married Theodore D. Weld, of 
Hyde Park, taking Archibald into her family, and Sarah 
assisting him in completing his education and entering the 
profession of law. 

In the decade following, from 1875 to 1885, the principal 
newcomers were Edward Everett Brown, Clement G. Mor- 
gan, and Butler R. Wilson, all lawyers. Brown was a native 



456 APPENDIX 

of New Hampshire, born in 1858. He studied law in the 
offices of Hon. John H. White, Judge of the Probate Court 
in New Hampshire, and of Hon. William A. Gaston, of 
Boston, as well as at the Boston University Law School, and 
was admitted to the Bar in 1884. Morgan was born in 
Georgia, graduated from Atlanta University in that State 
and from the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to 
practice in Boston in 1882. Wilson, also born in Georgia, 
in 1860, and a fellow-student with Morgan, at Atlanta, 
studied law at Boston University, and began practice in 
1884. Two younger men who grew up in Boston, and who 
entered into active service about this time, were Emery 
Morris, a nephew of Robert Morris, born in 1851; and Wil- 
liam A. Hazel, born about 1850, who became a successful 
draftsman and architect. 

In the next decade, from 1885 to 1895, the chief reinforce- 
ments were George Washington Forbes, from Mississippi, 
who, as noted elsewhere, has since 1895 been an assistant 
librarian in the West End branch of the Boston Public 
Library; and William H. Lewis, to whom a number of pre- 
vious references have been made. Lewis was born in 
Virginia, in 1868, graduated from Amherst College, studied 
law at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the 
Bar in 1895. 



STATISTICAL TABLES 



Table I 

NEGRO POPULATION AND TOTAL POPULATION 

OF BOSTON PROPER 

1742-1865 





Numbers and Percentages 




Year 


Negro 
population 


Increase 


Per cent 
increase 


Total 
population 


Per cent 
Negroes ] 
in total 


1742 


1374 






15,008 


9. 


1752 


1541 


167 


12. 


3 14,190 


10. 


1754 


9891 


-552 


-55. 






1765 


848 


-141 


-14. 


15,520 


6. 


1790 


766 


- 82 


- 9. 


18,320 


4. 


1800 


1174 


408 


53. 


24,937 


4.7 


1810 


1468 


294 


25. 


33,787 


4.3 


1820 


1690 


222 


15. 


43,298 


3.9 


1830 


1875 


185 


10.9 


61,392 


3. 


1840 


2427 


552 


29. 


93,383 


2.5 


1850 


1999 


-428 


-17. 


136,881 


1.4 


1855 


2160 


161 


8. 


158,793 


1.3 


1860 


>• 2284 


124 


5.7 


177,840 


1.2 


1865 


2348 


64 


2.8 


192,318 


1.2 



In the above figures, the population as given for each year 
has reference to Boston as geographically constituted in that 
year. Additions through such annexations as were made 
from time to time are of practically negligible effect, so far 
as the comparisons from period to period are concerned. 

This table shows that the percentage of Negroes in the 
total population was at its maximum at the time when the 
second count was taken, in 1752, and that from then down to 
the time of the war it steadily declined. It also appears that 
the rate of increase of the Negro population underwent a 
decline after 1800. 

• The figure of 989, for the year 1754, appears to have comprised only the slaves. 



458 



STATISTICAL TABLES 



Table II 

NEGRO POPULATION AND TOTAL POPULATION 

OF BOSTON PROPER AND GREATER BOSTON 

1865-1910 

Numbers and Percentages 



BOSTON PROPER 


GREATER BOSTON 








o 
be 


o 


"« 

ts 






£ 

1 


o 




Year 


Negro 


Total 


a 


s 1 


u a 


Negro 


Total 


a 


" s 














a 












1865 


2,348 


192,318 


1.2 






3,495 


421,936 


.8 






1870 


3,496 


250,526 


1.3 


48.8 


30.2 


6,648 


506,999 


1.1 


61.6 


19.8 


1875 


4,969 


341,919 


1.4 


42.1 


36.4 


7,400 


698,334 


1.2 


81. 


17.8 


1880 


6,873 


362,839 


1.6 


18.1 


6.1 


9,381 


620,178 


1.5 


26.7 


8.3 


1885 


6,058 


390,393 


1.5 


3.1 


7.5 


9,481 


726,832 


1.3 


4.8 


17.3 


1890 


8,125 


448,470 


1.8 


32.4 


14.8 


12,832 


849,967 


1.5 


30.3 


16.8 


1895 


9,472 


496,920 


1.9 


16.5 


10.8 


16,307 


1,001,474 


1.6 


27. 


17.a 


1900 


11,591 


560,892 


2. 


22.3 


12.8 


20, .306 


1,121,667 


1.8 


24.5 


11.8 


1905 


11,948 


595,380 


2. 


3.1 


6.2 


21,234 


1,243,808 


1.7 


4.5 


11. 


1910 


13,564 


670,585 


2. 


13.5 


12.6 


23.115 


1,373,409 


1.7 


8.8 


12.3 



The percentage of Negroes in the entire population is so 
small that, for purposes of this table and some others, the 
white population may be regarded as practically identical 
with the total. 

These figures show that the percentage of Negroes in the 
total population increased from 1865 to 1900, and that it has 
subsequently remained stationary, at a point slightly higher 
in the case of Boston proper than in the case of Greater 
Boston. 

The figures also show that, with the exception of the five- 
year periods 1880-85, 1900-05, and, in the case of Greater 
Boston, I'905-IO, the rate of increase of the Negro popula- 
tion has been in excess of that of the white population; but 
that this excess has at the same time tended to diminish. 



STATISTICAL TABLES 



459 



Table III 

URBAN AND SUBURBAN DISTRIBUTION —NEGRO 

POPULATION AND TOTAL POPULATION 

OF GREATER BOSTON 

1865-1910 

Percentages 
(Numbers supplied in Table II) 













0/ 


V 




Per cent 


Per cent 


Per cent 


Per cent 






Year 


Negro pop. 


total pop. 


Negro pop. 


total pop. 


•Sol 


■ill 




in B.P.i 


inB.P. 


in suburbs' 


in suburbs 


O J2 

a V '" 
03 Z .2 


Pi 2 .3 


1865 


67. 


45. 


33. 


55. 






1870 


62. 


49. 


38. 


51. 


87. 


11. 


1875 


67. 


57. 


33. 


43. 


12. 


0. 


1880 


62. 


58. 


38. 


42. 


44. 


.3 


1885 


63. 


53. 


37. 


47. 


- 5. 


30. 


1890 


63. 


52. 


37. 


48. 


37. 


19. 


1895 


58. 


49. 


42. 


51. 


45. 


25. 


1900 


57. 


50. 


43. 


50. 


27. 


11. 


1905 


56. 


47. 


44. 


53. 


6. 


15. 


1910 


58. 


48. 


42. 


52. 


2. 


8. 



These figures show that, though the percentage of the 
total population of Greater Boston living in the suburbs is 
larger than the percentage of the Negro population living in 
the suburbs, this suburban percentage has in the case of the 
total population decreased, since 1865, from 55 to 52; while, 
in the case of the Negroes, it has increased from 33 to 42. 
Likewise, from 1865 to 1900, with the single exception of the 
period 1880-85, the rate of increase of the Negro suburban 
population greatly exceeded that of the suburban population 
as a whole. 

What this signifies is that, so far as increasing residence in 
the more open and healthful outlying districts is concerned, 

* The abbreviation " B.P." stands for " Boston proper," or the territory included 
within the civic municipality of Boston. By the term "Suburbs " is meant all terri- 
tory outside the limits of Boston proper, but still within the limits of Greater Boston. 



460 STATISTICAL TABLES 

the Negroes have in the main fared better than the rest 
of the population. 

Since 1900, however, the suburban rate of increase for 
Negroes has markedly diminished, and has fallen con- 
siderably below that of the whites. This probably indicates 
a decrease — whether temporary or not remains to be seen 
— in the movement of Negroes from Boston proper to the 
suburbs. But it probably does not indicate any recent 
tendency toward Negro congestion in the inner sections of 
the city; for the reason that even within the municipality 
the Negroes are moving in growing, though of course still 
minor numbers into the more removed residential districts, 
which are practically the same as the suburbs in general 
character. 



STATISTICAL TABLES 461 

Table IV 

NEGRO POPULATION OF GREATER BOSTON 

1865-1910 
In Detail, by Cities and Towns of the Metro- 
politan District ^ 



Place 



Boston 

Arlington. . . . 

Belmont 

Brookline. . . . 
Cambridge. . . 

Chelsea 

Dedham 

Everett 

Hyde Park... 
Lexington... . 

Lynn ' 

Maiden 

Medford 

Melrose 

Milton 

Nahant 

Newton 

Quincy 

Revere 

Saugus 

Somerville. . . 
Stoneham.. . . 
Swampscott.. 
Wakefield.... 
Waltham . . . . 
Watertown.. . 
Winchester. . . 
Winthrop. . . . 
Woburn 



1865 


1875 


1883 


1890 


1895 


1900 


1905 


25722 


4969 


6058 


8125 


9472 


11591 


11948 




23 


28 


48 


61 


55 


62 


4 


8 


1' 




8 


4 


8 


5 


13 


17 


42 


184 


161 


194 


377 


1103 


1689 


1988 


2849 


3888 


4290 


150 


311 


513 


668 


693 


731 


566 


31 


75 


48 




72 


65 


53 




22 


24 


72 


455 


634 


801 




78 


104 


98 


108 


116 


111 


10 


12 


17 


14 


17 


13 


22 


229 


430 


624 


715 


767 


784 


772 


23 


30 


61 


107 


326 


446 


525 


8 


18 


21 


55 


169 


244 


248 


2 


11 


37 


48 


105 


130 


96 


5 


32 


36 


47 


53 


64 


67 


11 


1 


1 




2 




3 


14 


130 


190 


342 


354 


505 


522 


6 


7 


14 


16 


6 


27 


22 






14 


24 


67 


43 


30 


1 




18 


14 


35 


27 


28 


16 


36 


87 


65 


72 


140 


229 


6 


27 


27 


35 


27 


21 


32 


1 


1 


15 


16 


16 


44 


28 




9 


18 


12 


17 


25 


31 


7 


13 


15 


16 


36 


51 


43 


6 


19 


54 


25 


56 


53 


41 


2 


3 


34 


45 


107 


140 


186 


3 




1 


28 


34 


43 


36 


6 


19 


75 


100 


218 


261 


240 



1910 



13564 
67 
15 

221 
4707 

242 
54 

795 
87 
25 

700 

486 

431 

110 

44 

4 

467 
45 
33 
55 

217 
25 
14 
31 
62 
44 

281 
47 

242 



1 The "Metropolitan District," as defined in connection with the work of certain 
metropolitan bodies like the Park Commission, and as comprising the towns and 
cities named above, is practically coincident with the unified and centralized social 
community commonly referred to as Greater Boston. 

' This figure is in excess of that given for Boston proper in the preceding tables, 
in that here it includes the Negro population in the following outlying districts, 
which were annexed to Boston during the ensuing decade: namely, Brighton, 
Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury, and West Roxbury. 

' In general, in this volume, Lynn is not counted a part of Greater Boston, be- 
cause of its considerable population and largely independent industrial life. 



462 



STATISTICAL TABLES 



Table V 

POPULATION OF GREATER BOSTON, BY COLOR 
1910 

In Detail, by Cities and Towns of the Metro- 
politan District 



Place 



Metropolitan District 

Boston 

Arlington 

Belmont 

Brookline 

Cambridge 

Chelsea 

Dedham 

Everett 

Hyde Park 

Lexington 

Lynn 

Maiden 

Medford 

Melrose 

Milton 

Nahant 

Newton 

Quincy 

Revere 

Saugus 

Somerville 

Stoneham 

Swampscott 

WakeBeld 

Waltham 

Watertown 

Winchester 

Winthrop 

Woburn 



Total 
population 



1,373,409 

670,585 

11,187 

5,542 

27,792 

104,839 

32,452 

9,284 
33,484 
15,507 

4,918 
89,336 
44,404 
23,150 
15,715 

7,924 

1,184 
39,806 
32,642 
18,219 

8,047 
77,236 

7,090 

6,204 
11,404 
27,834 
12,875 

9,309 
10,132 
15,308 



White 



1,348,424 

655,736 

11,115 

5,524 

27,547 

100,024 

32,177 

9,227 
32,672 
15,404 

4,891 
88,518 
43,897 
22,704 
15,592 

7,873 

1,179 
39,303 
32,568 
18,173 

7,990 
76,956 

7,064 

6,183 
11,371 
27,743 
12,826 

9,026 
10,080 
15,061 



Negro 



23,115 

13,564 

67 

15 

221 
4,707 

242 
54 

795 
87 
25 

700 

486 

431 

110 

44 

4 

467 
45 
33 
55 

217 
25 
14 
31 
62 
44 

281 
47 

242 



All others 
(Chinese, Jap- 
anese and In- 
dians) 



1,870 

1,285 

5 

3 

24 

108 

33 

3 

17 

16 

2 

118 

21 

15 

13 

7 

1 

36 

29 

13 

2 

63 

1 

7 

2 

29 

5 

2 

5 

5 



STATISTICAL TABLES 463 



Table VI 

EMIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM MASSACHU- 
SETTS, BOSTON PROPER, AND GREATER 
BOSTON, 1890-1900 

The base upon which the following table is built up con- 
sists of the figures, in the federal censuses of 1890 and 1900, 
showing the number of Massachusetts-born Negroes who 
were resident in other States in those years. 

A simple comparison of the 1900 figures in this regard 
with those of 1890, for each State, is not, of course, suffi- 
cient to show the total accessions — if any — to that State, 
from the ranks of Massachusetts-born Negroes, during the 
decade. It is necessary also to allow for the deaths during 
the decade among those Massachusetts-born Negroes resi- 
dent in the given State in 1890; and also for the deaths of 
immigrants to that State during the decade, which have 
occurred before the decade's close. 

For this purpose, assumption has been made of a death 
rate of 2.5 per cent (25 deaths per 1000 persons), this being 
a point between the prevailing Negro death rates North and 
South. As there are no figures which indicate the number of 
Massachusetts-born immigrants entering a given State each 
year, the deaths among such immigrants are calculated 
roughly by taking one half the increase in the number of 
immigrants during the decade (this being a mean between the 
number arriving in the year 1891 and the larger number 
arrived by 1900) as a numerator; to which the death rate of 
2.5 per cent is applied. In many cases the numbers involved 
are so small that the deaths are practically negligible in 
quantity, and are therefore not taken account of. 

Further emigration of Massachusetts-born Negroes, out 
of any given State into others, is another factor involved; 
but as the interstate total of such migration remains the 
same, this element need not be included in the calculation. 



464 



STATISTICAL TABLES 



Negroes of Massachusetts Birth Emigrating 
FROM Massachusetts as a Whole 



o 
•c 

H 
o 

s 


& 

% 

S o 

a OS 

§2 


2 

;^ 

a 
o 

i o 

S2 


o 
o 
a> 


-a 
v 6. 

£2 


Minimum immigra- 
tion Mass.-born 
Negroes 1890-1900 


gas 
a.a-S 


§2 

.2 -° °> 

3 si 
h22 


Ala. 


20 


19 


- 1 


4 


3 


- 


3 


Alas. 





8 


+ 8 





8 


- 


8 


Ark. 


33 


14 


-19 


7 


-12 


- 


- 


Ariz 


3 


31 


+28 





28 


3 


31 


Cal. 


91 


68 


-26 


21 


- 5 


- 


- 


Col. 


43 


41 


- 2 


10 


8 


- 


- 


Conn. 


395 


454 


+59 


88 


147 


16 


163 


Del. 


6 


12 


+ 6 


1 


7 


- 


7 


DC. 


99 


132 


+33 


22 


55 


6 


61 


Fla. 


3-i 


39 


+ 7 


7 


14 


1 


15 


Ga. 


ii 


65 


+23 


9 


32 


3 


35 


Ha. 





1 


+ 1 





1 


- 


1 


Id. 


1 


1 








1 


- 


1 


111. 


76 


117 


+41 


17 


58 


6 


64 


Ind. 


18 


30 


+ 12 


4 


16 


2 


18 


I.T. 





3 


+ 3 





3 


- 


3 


Iowa 


9 


10 


+ 1 


2 


3 


- 


3 


Kas. 


13 


10 


- 3 


3 





- 


- 


Ky. 


11 


17 


+ 6 


2 


8 


- 


8 


La. 


55 


38 


-17 


12 


- 5 


- 


- 


Me. 


24 


56 


+32 


6 


37 


4 


41 


Md. 


69 


85 


+ 16 


15 


31 


3 


34 


Mich. 


33 


32 


- 1 


7 


6 


- 


6 


Minn. 


19 


16 


- 3 


4 


1 


- 


1 


Miss. 


19 


17 


- 2 


4 


2 


- 


2 


Mo. 


34 


37 


+ 3 


7 


10 


1 


11 


Mont. 


5 


5 





1 


1 


- 


1 


Neb. 


15 


14 


- 1 


3 


2 


- 


2 


Nev. 


1 


1 








1 


- 


1 


N.H. 


46 


44 


- 2 


10 


8 


- 


8 


N.J. 


101 


156 


+55 


22 


77 


8 


85 


N.M. 


3 


3 











- 


- 


N.Y. 


462 


606 


+144 


104 


'248 


27 


276 


N.C. 


21 


24 


+ 3 


5 


8 


- 


11 


N. &S. 
















Dak. 


7 


2 


- 5 


1 


- 4 


- 


- 


Ohio 


143 


64 


-79 


32 


-47 


- 


- 


Ok. 


1 


3 


2 





2 


- 


2 


Or. 


11 


12 


1 


2 


3 


- 


3 


Pa. 


197 


294 


+97 


44 


141 


15 


156 


R.L 


320 


406 


+86 


71 


157 


17 


174 


S.C. 


19 


16 


- 3 


4 


1 


- 


1 


Tenn. 


21 


22 


- 2 


5 


3 


- 


3 


Tex. 


38 


51 


+ 13 


8 


21 


2 


23 


Utah 


1 


1 











- 


- 


Vt. 


65 


67 


+ 2 


14 


16 


2 


18 


Va. 


58 


114 


+56 


13 


69 


7 


76 


Wash. 


16 


12 


- 4 


3 


- 1 


- 


- 


W.Va. 


6 


10 


+ 4 


1 


5 


- 


5 


Wis. 


5 


12 


+ 7 


1 


8 


1 


9 


Wy. 


1 





- 1 





- 1 


Total 


1369 



STATISTICAL TABLES 465 

Summary 

Total emigration of Massachusetts-born Negroes from 

Massachusetts. 1890-1900 1869 

Average yearly emigration, 1890-1900 136.9 

B. Entire Emigration of Negroes; both Massachu- 
setts-Born AND Others 

1. Emigration from Massachusetts as a Whole 

The emigration from Massachusetts of Negroes of Massa- 
chusetts birth having been ascertained, it is now possible 
to estimate the entire Negro emigration from the State, on 
the basis of the ratio between that part of the State's Negro 
population which is native, and the total. 

The mean native-born Negro population of the State for 

the decade 1890-1900 may be reckoned roughly as one 

half the sum of that of 1890 and that of 1900: — i.e., 

94554-11,747 _ _, 
— , or 10,601. 

2 

In the same way, the mean total Negro population of the 

, , 1 , , , , 22,144-^31,974 
State, for the decade, may be reckoned as r , 

or 27,064. 

The native Negro population of Massachusetts, therefore, 
stands in relation to the entire Negro population of the 
State as 10,601 to 27,064; forming a proportion of 39 per 
cent. 

Assuming now that the emigration from Massachusetts of 

the Negroes who are native to the State corresponds roughly 

in rate with that of the non-native element; the former, 1369 

for the decade 1890-1900, may be reckoned as 39 per cent 

of the total for that decade, — which would thus amount to 

1369 

X 100. or 3510. 

39 

Summary 

Total emigration of Negroes from Massachusetts, 1890-1900 8510 
Average yearly emigration, 1890-1900 351 

2. Emigration from Boston Proper 

The entire Negro emigration from Boston proper may now 
be calculated in the same way, on the basis of the ratio be- 



466 STATISTICAL TABLES 

tween the Negro population of Boston and that of the State 

as a whole. 

The mean Negro population of Boston for the decade 

8,125 + 11,591 

1690-1900, was — , or 9858: which stood in rela- 

2 

tion to the mean Negro population of the State as 9858 to 

27,06-1; forming a proportion of 36 per cent. 

The total emigration of Negroes from Massachusetts for 

the decade being 3510, the emigration from Boston proper 

would then be reckoned, on a strict percentage basis, as 36 

per cent of 3510; — X 100, or 1263. As a matter of fact, 

36 

however, Boston, on account of its more intensive city con- 
ditions and its position as a metropolis, is undoubtedly sub- 
ject to a shifting or emigration of its Negro population which 
is considerably larger in extent than its proportion of the 
Negro population of the State; and which must amount, at a 
reasonable estimate, to 50 per cent of the State's entire 
emigration, — or, for the decade concerned, to 1755. 

Summary 

Total Negro emigration from Boston proper, 1890-1900. . . 1755 
Average yearly emigration, 1890-1900 175.5 

3. Emigration from Greater Boston 

The mean Negro population of the Greater Boston dis- 

12,832+20,306 
trict, for the decade 1890-1900, was ~ , or 

2 

16,569. This stood in relation to the mean Negro population 
of the State as 16,569 to 27,064; forming a proportion of 61 
per cent. The emigration from Greater Boston for the 
decade would, therefore, on a strict reckoning, be 61 per 
cent of 3510, or 2141. But, for the same reasons that hold 
true in the case of Boston proper, the emigration from the 
urban district of Greater Boston is relatively larger than for 
the rest of the State; amounting, doubtless, to not less than 
75 per cent of the whole, — or 2632. 

Summary 

Total emigration of Negroes from Greater Boston, 1890-1900 2632 
Average yearly emigration, 1890-1900 263 



STATISTICAL TABLES 467 

Table VII 

IMMIGRATION OF NEGROES TO BOSTON 
PROPER AND GREATER BOSTON 

To calculate the extent of Negro immigration, it is neces- 
sary to add to the net increase of the local Negro population, 
during the given period, the estimated local emigration of 
Negroes during the same period; inasmuch as immigration, 
besides yielding a net increase, has also filled the space left 
by emigration. Strictness of procedure would require 
furthermore that any excess of deaths over births, for the 
period, should be taken into account; since depletion from 
this cause also has to be made up for by accessions from 
without, before any net gain is shown. But as the births 
nearly, if not entirely, offset the deaths, for the two decades 
in question, this factor may for practical purposes be 
omitted from the present calculation. 

A. Boston Proper, 1890-1900 

Increase of Negro population of Boston, 1890-1900 3466 

Estimated Negro emigration from Boston, 1890-1900 (Table 

VI, B, 2) 1755 

Total Negro immigration to Boston, 1890-1900 6221 

Average per year, Boston, 1890-1900 522 

B. Boston Proper, 1900-10 

Increase in Negro population of Boston, 1900-10 1973 

Estimated Negro emigration from Boston, 1900-10 1317 ^ 

Total Negro immigration to Boston, 1900-10 3290 

Average per year, Boston, 1900-10 329 

C. Greater Boston, 1890-1900 

Increase in Negro population of Greater Boston, 1890-1900 7474 
Estimated Negro emigration from Greater Boston, 1890- 

1900 (Table VI, B, 3) 2632 

Total Negro immigration, Greater Boston, 1890-1900.. . 10,106 
Average per year 1010 

* This figure is estimated, rather than calculated, on the assumption, borne out 
by observation and report, that the emigration of Negroes from Boston.in the decade 
1900-10, was probably at least 25 per cent less than that (as above given) of the 
decade preceding. 



468 



STATISTICAL TABLES 
D. Greater Boston, 1900-10 



Increase in Negro population of Greater Boston, 1900-10... 2809 
Estimated Negro emigration from Greater Boston, 1900- 

1910 1974 ^ 

Total Negro immigration. Greater Boston, 1900-10 4783 

Average per year 478 

* This figure is estimated on the same assumption as in the case of section B, 
above; — i.e., that the Negro emigration from Greater Boston, in the decade 1900- 
10, was at least i5 per cent less than in the decade preceding. 



Table VIII 

STATE NATIVITY OF NEGROES IN BOSTON 
PROPER AND MASSACHUSETTS 

In Percentages, from 1900 back to 1860 

The numbers put before the percentages show the nu- 
merical rank of each State, for each year given, as respects 
the quantitative contribution of that State to the nativity 
of the local Negro population. 

For States contributing less than 100 individuals, no per- 
centages are indicated. 

The figures for Massachusetts as a whole are given for 
1880, as no figures for Boston alone are obtainable in the case 
of that particular census year. 





Boston 


Boston 


Mass. 


Boston 


Boston 




1900 


1890 


1880 


1870 


1860 


Massachusetts 


128.2 


132.9 


154.9 


141.1 


146.6 


Virginia 


2 27.6 


2 29.9 


2 19.1 


2 24.8 


2 15.3 


North Carolina 


3 11.5 


3 7.4 


* 3.4 


9 3.4 




Maryland 


* 4.7 


* 4.5 


» 4.1 


3 7.7 


» 8.4 


Georgia 


6 3.8 


8 2.5 








District of Columbia. . 


6 2.9 


6 2.7 


9 1.4 






New York 


7 2.9 

8 2.8 


s 2.8 
^ 2.6 


6 3.4 
8 1.7 


* 4.5 


* 6.4 


South Carolina 




Pennsylvania 


9 2.5 


9 2.5 


' 1.9 


6 3.9 


s 5.4 


Connecticut 


1" 1.1 
" .9 




8 2.2 






New Jersey 




Maine 


>2 .9 


•» 1.5 








Rhode Island 






10 1.2 











STATISTICAL TABLES 
Table IX 



469 



NATIVITY BY SECTIONS OF THE COUNTRY 

NEGROES OF BOSTON PROPER 

AND MASSACHUSETTS 

In Percentages, from 1900 back to 1860 
This table, of course, applies only to Negroes of American birth. 





Boston 


Mass. 


Boston 


Mass. 


Mass. 


Boston 


Mass. 


Boston 




1900 


1900 


1890 


1890 


18801 


1870 


1870 


1860 


North 


39 


50.3 


44. 


59.5 


67.8 


55.6 


66.3 


69.8 


South 


59 


45.2 


54. 


38.4 


31.4 


43.2 


33.7 


29.1 


Central and 


















Western States 


2 


4.5 


2. 


2.1 


.8 


1.2 





1.1 



* No figures for Boston alone are obtainable tor the year 1880. 



Table X 

NEGROES OF FOREIGN BIRTH AND FOREIGN 
PARENTAGE — BOSTON PROPER 
AND MASSACHUSETTS 

In Percentages, from 1900 back to 1860 

For years in which no figures are given for Boston, such figures 
are not available. Figures of foreign birth are lacking prior to 1890. 





Boston 
1900 


Boston 
1890 


Mass. 
1880 


Boston 
1870 


Boston 
1860 


Mass. 
1860 


Foreign born 

Foreign parentage. . . 


10.2 
16.8 


14.2 

18.8 


6.41 


10.8 


14.9 


6.3 



1 The percentage for Boston in 1880 was probably (estimated) about 13.6. 



470 STATISTICAL TABLES 

Table XI 

MARRIAGE RATE— NEGRO AND WHITE 
POPULATION 

BOSTON PROPER, 1900-06 

The following figures apply to the number of marriages 
per one thousand of population. 



Year 


Negro Rate 


White Rate 


1900 


18.3 


18.7 


1901 


17.8 


18.1 


1902 


16.6 


17.7 


1903 


19.5 


18.2 


1904 


18.1 


18.2 


1905 


17.7 


18.5 


1906 


21.5 


24.3 


Average, 1900-06 


18.5 


19.1 



The proportion of Negroes in the total being practically 
negligible, the figures quoted for the white population in the 
above table are those reported for the total population by 
the Municipal Registry Department, for each year; on the 
basis, for non-census years, of the estimated population. 

In the case of the Negro population, however, where such 
yearly estimates are less dependable, the population for each 
non-census year has been calculated, for the table above, by 
adding to the population of the last census year, preceding, 
one, two, three or four fifths, respectively, of the increase 
recorded by the following census, taken at the close of the 
given five-year period. 



STATISTICAL TABLES 
Table XII 



471 



BIRTH AND DEATH RATES — NEGRO AND 
WHITE POPULATION 

BOSTON PROPER 1900-10 

The figures below apply to number of births and deaths 
per one thousand of population. 





Negro birth rate 


Negro death rate 


White birth rate 


White death rate 


1900.... 


27.7 


28.4 


29.1 


20.8 


1901.... 


24.4 


27.4 


27.1 


19.6 


1902. . . . 


26.6 


28.3 


26.3 


18.6 


1903.... 


25.1 


25.4 


26. 


17.6 


1904,. . . . 


23.4 


23.2 


25. 


17.4 


1905.... 


23. 


23. 


26. 


18.4 


1906.... 


26.9 


27.6 


28.2 


18.8 


1907.... 


26.9 


25.5 






1908. . . . 


27.5 


26.9 






1909.... 


25.8 


20. 






1910.... 


22.8 


23.7 






Average 


25.4+ 


25.4+ 


26.9+ 


18.7+ 



The Negro birth and death rates are calculated on the 
same basis as that followed in the case of the Negro marriage 
rate (Table XI). The rates given for the white population 
are those reported for the total population by the Municipal 
Registry Department. Though the latter figures, as here 
cited, come down only through the year 1906, it may safely 
be assumed that the average would remain substantially the 
same if the figures were brought down to 1900. 



472 STATISTICAL TABLES 

Table XIII 

NEGRO BIRTH AND DEATH RATES 
BOSTON PROPER 1865-1910 

Averages for Five-Year Periods 

The purpose of the following table is to afford a more 
stable basis for the study of the trend of the local Negro 
birth and death rates, than is possible when recourse is had 
only to rates for single years. Owing either to inaccuracies 
in the estimates of ^the size of the Negro population for non- 
census years, or possible under- or over-counts in the yearly 
recording of births and deaths, rate figures for single years 
are almost sure to be somewhat uncertain, and therefore 
more or less unreliable. When the average rates for five-year 
periods are taken, however, a more substantial set of figures 
is provided, making possible more reliable conclusions as to 
tendencies extending over a term of years. 

In order to eliminate from the figures given below the ele- 
ment of doubt arising from estimates of population for non- 
census years, one half the sum of the Negro population at 
the beginning of the five-year period and of that at its close, 
is regarded as the mean population for the period. The sum 
of the Negro births and deaths for the period are divided by 
the number of years (six, including both beginning and ending 
year), in order to get the yearly average. On the basis of this 
mean population, and this yearly average, the average rates 
for the period are reckoned. 



Five-year period 


Birth rate 


Death rate 


1865-70 


26. 


35.2 


1870-75 


30.9 


41.3 


1875-80 


29.5 


30.4 


1880-85 


34.9 


39. 


1885-90 


29. 


36.2 


1890-95 


26.4 


32.1 


1895-00 


22. 


27.9 


1900-05 


25.4 


26.5 


1905-10 


25.8 


24.3 



STATISTICAL TABLES 473 

These figures show a decline, in the Negro death rate, 
which has been uninterrupted since 1880, and also a small 
increase in the birth rate since 1895; as the joint result of 
which factors — though chiefly of the former — the death 
rate has finally, in the decade 1905-10, declined to a point 
which leaves an excess of births. 



474 STATISTICAL TABLES 

Table XIV 

A COMPARISON OF THE \\THITE AND NEGRO 
POPULATION OF BOSTON PROPER 

As RESPECTS Sex, Marital Condition, Proportion of 

Children, and Age Groups — In Percentages, 

for the Year 1895 

The year 1895 is selected for this comparison because the 
Massachusetts census for that year supplies the requisite 
information in fullest detail. It may safely be assumed that 
a similar comparison for any subsequent year would show 
substantially the same results. 

As the Negroes form such a small fraction of the whole 
population, the latter is considered, for comparative pur- 
poses, as virtually identical with the white population. 

A. Sex 

Negro population; — men exceed women by about 1 per 
cent of the whole. 

White population; — women exceed men by about 4 per 
cent of the whole. 

B. Marital Condition 

1. Women 

Single Per cent 

Native-born Negroes 49 

Native-born Whites 67 

Foreign -born Negroes 36 

Foreign-born Whites 36 

Combined native- and foreign-born Negroes 47 + 

Combined native- and foreign-born Whites 55 

Married 

Negroes 38 + 

Whites 34 

Widowed 

Negroes 13.6 

Whites 9.9 

Divorced 

Negroes 29 

Whites 19 



STATISTICAL TABLES 475 

2. Men 

Single P„ cent 

Negroes 5Q 

Whites 56 

Married 

Negroes 38 

Whites 36 

Widowed 

Negroes 3.8 

Whites 3.4 

Divorced 

Negroes 14 

Whites 07 

C. Proportion op Children 

Children, age 1-U Pe, cent 

Negroes 18 

Average number children per married woman. . . .72 

Whites 25 

Average number children per married woman. . . 1.12 
Infants under one year 

Negroes. 1.7 

I Whites 1.9 

D. Older Age Groups 

Persons 15-49 Pe, cent 

Negroes 71 ^ 

Whites 60 

Persons 50 and above 

Negroes 9.7 

Whites 13.6 

Persons 60 and above 

Negroes 3.8 

Whites 6. 



476 



STATISTICAL TABLES 
Table XV 



CAUSES OF POVERTY AMONG DIFFERENT 
RACES 

Based upon a Tabulation of 7,225 Specific Cases 
Reported to the Associated Charities of Boston 

AND certain other CiTIES ^ 



Classification 



1. Indicating misconduct . . . 

Drink 

Immorality 

ShiftlessnesB and ineffi- 
ciency 

Crime and dishonesty . . 

Roving disposition .... 
3. Indicating misfortune . . . 

A. Lack of normal support 

Imprisonment of bread- 
winner 

Orphans and abandoned 
children 

Neglected by relatives . 

No male support . . . 

B. Matters of employment . 

Lack of employment 

Insufficient employ- 
ment 

Poorly paid employ- 
ment 

Unhealthy and danger- 
ous employment . . 

C. Matters of personal in- 

capacity 

Ignorance of English . 

Accident 

Sickness or death in 

family 

Physical defects . . . 

Insanity 

Old age 

3. Miscellaneous 

Large family 

Nature of abode 

Other, or unknown .... 



Fekcentaqes 



27.35 

15.1K 
0.63 

9.19 

0.74 

1.63 

69. S8 

e.oi 

0.67 

0.,'!7 
0.H9 
4.11 
33.i0 
24.57 

6.64 

2.08 

0.11 

SO.li 



20.31 
3.41 

0.93 



Negro 



13.76 

6.24 
0.92 

S.69 

0.73 

0.18 

8331 

i.96 

0.37 

0.37 
1.28 
2.94 
27.15 
17.43 

8.62 

0.92 

0.18 

51.20 

1.47 



4.59 
2.93 

0..5.5 
0.18 
2.20 



Ger- 
man 



16.67 

7.75 
0.12 

7.39 

0.47 

CM 

78.64 

5.17 

0.12 



0.82 

4.23 

3S.73 

28.40 

7.51 



3i-7i 



22.65 

4.70 
0.70 



30.43 

23.62 
0.27 

5.78 

0.38 

0.38 

67.65 

7.0i 

1.20 

0.38 

0.38 

5.08 

26.1i 

18.88 

6.38 



31.37 
0.06 
311 

19.80 
3.49 
0.SI3 
6.9S 

2.02 
0.87 
0.06 
1.09 



28.01 

16.93 
0.32 

7.12 

1.11 

2.53 

69.46 

6.33 

1.27 

0.63 
1.27 
3.16 
30.S5 
24.68 

4.75 



1.27 
3.64 
263 
0.79 
0.47 
1.27 



All 
Other 



18.64 

8.27 
0.30 

7.52 

1.05 

1.50 

7911 

8.12 

0.60 

0.30 
1.96 
5.26 
34-59 
25.87 

5.11 



36.0 
3.76 
3.46 

21.66 
4.51 
0.90 
2.11 

2.20 
0.75 
0.15 
1.35 



2S.11 

15.28 
0.44 

7.52 

0.68 

1.19 

72.03 

6-.32 

0.76 

0.35 
0.91 
4.30 
31.60 
23.17 

6.53 



3L11 
0.42 
2.86 

22.27 
8.70 
0.86 
4.00 

2.86 
0.73 
0.13 
2.01 



The above classification is arranged in three main divi- 
sions, sections 1, 2, and 3 totalizing to one hundred, and the 
subdivisions thereunder adding to the percentage line of each 
section. The first section indicates poverty caused by mis- 
conduct, and has details of five causes which resulted in the 
poverty of the persons considered; the second indicates mis- 



» Warner's American Charitiei, 1894 ed., Table VIII. 

The date of these cases is not stated, but it was presumably about the time of the 
date of publication of Mr. Warner's book, — i.e., not long prior to 1894. 



STATISTICAL TABLES 477 

fortune, with three main causes, each being subdivided into 
direct causes which could be classified under each head; and 
third, miscellaneous, or causes which were of a nature not 
readily classifiable under either misconduct or misfortune. 

Examination of the foregoing figures shows that in the 
case of the Negroes the percentage of poverty due to miscon- 
duct was lower than in the case of any other race; while, on 
the other hand, the percentage of poverty due to misfortune 
in some form or other was highest among the Negroes. 

Analyzing these statistics still further, it appears that the 
Negroes exhibit the lowest extent of poverty due to drink. 
"This low percentage has been corroborated by the investi- 
gation of John Koren,^ whose conclusions are: that com- 
paratively few Negroes are habitual drunkards; that intem- 
perance is only accountable for a small part of the Negro's 
poverty; and that only in exceptional cases are drinking 
habits a barrier to steady employment." ^ 

"Those who know the colored people only casually or by 
hearsay may be surprised to find the misconduct causes 
running so low among them, while sickness as a cause is of 
greater relative importance than in any other nationality. 
But to one who has worked in Baltimore or Washington it 
seems a natural result, and indeed a confirmation of the relia- 
bility of the statistics. The colored people are weak physi- 
cally, become sick easily, and often are without visible resis- 
tance to disease. At the same time, they have a dread of 
being assisted, especially when they think an institution will 
be recommended; and this, together with a certain apathy, 
will often induce them to endure great privation rather than 
ask for help. Besides this, there are many associations among 
them for mutual help, and the criminal and semi-criminal 
have a brutal way of making their women support them. 
That the percentage for 'lack of work,' 17.43, is the lowest, 
and that for 'insufficient employment,' 8.62, is the highest, 
under these two heads, perhaps reflects their hand-to-mouth 
way of working at odd jobs rather than taking steady 
work." ' 

' Koren (Committee of Fifty), Economic Aspects, etc., p. 176. 

» Warner's American Charities, 1908 ed., p. 59. 

• Warner's American Charities, 1908 ed., pp. 69-60. 



478 



STATISTICAL TABLES 
Table XVI 



OWNERSHIP OF PROPERTY BY NEGROES OF 
BOSTON PROPER, THE SUBURBS, AND 
GREATER BOSTON, FOR THE YEAR 1910 

(The following figures are supplementary to those given in chapter 
IX, pp. 384-5.) 

A. Property Actually Reported. 



Area 


Owners 


Pieces 


Value 


Boston 

Cambridge 

Other suburbs (15) 


183 
175 

283 


241 

275 
310 


$1,143,500 
869,000 
693,000 


Total 


641 


826 


$2,705,585 



B. All Property — Additions Estimated. 



Area 


Owners 


Pieces 


Value 


Boston 

Cambridge 

Other suburbs (15) 


215 
200 
365 


265 
300 
407 


$1,250,000 
950,000 
900,000 


Total 


780 


972 


$3,100,000 



Total private ownership. Greater Boston $3,100,000 

Total corporate ownership, " " 400,000 

Grand total, individual and corporate ownership, 

Greater Boston $3,500,000 



STATISTICAL TABLES 479 

C. Actually Reported — Fifteen Suburbs 



Area 


Owners 


Pieces 


Value 


Winchester 

Chelsea 

Woburn 

Everett 

Dedham 

Melrose 

Maiden 

Somerville 

Medford 

Hyde Park 

Milton 

Stoneham 

Wakefield 

Newton 

Waltham 


21 

28 

30 

71 

6 

3 

25 

13 

37 

11 

3 

3 

1 

30 

1 


24 

39 

30 

76 

7 

3 

25 

14 

37 

12 

3 

3 

1 

35 

1 


$48,400 

82,950 

45,285 

191.100 

11.350 

6.000 

59.800 

51,800 

68,000 

34,150 

4,500 

6,850 

4,500 

74,400 

4,000 


Total 


283 


310 


$693,085 



INDEX 



Abolition Movement, the Boston Ne- 
groes' specific share in, 30; as fore- 
runners of, 36-38; as participating 
in formation of New England Anti- 
Slavery Society, 42-43; in response 
to Garrison's appeal, and use of the 
"Liberator" as a medium of expres- 
sion, 46; indistinct organization at 
first, 46; as regards Boston commit- 
tee appointed by free Negroes, 46 
in formation of separate societies 
46; as received into white societies. 
47-48; as elected to board of New 
England Anti-Slavery Society, 47. 
Charles Lenox Remond, first Negro 
Abolitionist platform speaker, 47 
increasing participation of Negroes 
in Movement, 48; Remond in Brit- 
ish Isles, and his return with Ad- 
dress from Irish People, 53-54; en- 
trance of Frederick Douglass into 
Movement, 54-56; activity of Wil- 
liam Wells Brown, 56; assistance 
given runaway slaves, 57-64; coun- 
cil meetings, 57-58; prayers for 
slavery's destruction, 69; Negroes' 
part in celebration of the Proclama- 
tion, 70-71; as forerunners, further 
reference, 405; women, 450; minis- 
ters, 452. 

Abolition Movement, Boston source 
and center of, 30-71; enthusiasm of 
Abolitionists for Negro, following 
the war, 81; effect of Movement in 
arousing the Negro, 82-84, 446; re- 
sults in broadening Negro's rights, 
94; passing away of Abolitionists, 
112-13; effect on Negro's sense of 
citizenship, 267-68; propaganda of 
racial inter-association, 407. 

Acting, 202, 359. 

Adams, Mrs. Agnes, leader in organ- 
ization of Negro women, 212/. 

Adams, John, w., 8, 11. 

Adams, Samuel, w., 11. 

Addams, Jane, w., 126. 

Advocate, the, Negro newspaper, 103 
/., 216. 

Africa, 1, If., 45, 160, 172, 173, 198, 
238, 257, 317, 422, 438. 

African, 1, 164/., 172, 173/., 252, 399, 
450. 455. 



1 To avoid frequent use of racial 
designations, the abbreviation "w." is 
put after all names of white persons. 
Names not so marked may be assumed 
to be those of Negroes. 



African Abolition Free-Hold Society, 
46/. 

African Female Anti-Slavery Society, 
46/. 

African Meeting House, the, estab- 
lishment of, 21-22; Negro private 
school located in, 23; organization 
of New England Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety in, 43; Negro "Cradle of Lib- 
erty," 43; Rev. Thomas Paul, pas- 
tor in early Abolition period, 46 /. ; 
become known as old Joy Street 
Church, 61; meeting to recruit Ne- 
gro volunteers for war, 73; evolu- 
tion of name, 241 ; in Abolition 
period, 452. 

African Society, 21. 

"Afro-American," the term, 164. 

Agitation. (See Discrimination and 
Rights.) 

Alabama, 108/, 423. 

Aldermen, Negro, 274, 275, 282, 283. 

Allen, Isaac B., on Governor's Coun- 
cil, 283. 

Allen, Macon B., earliest lawyer, 450. 

AUston, J. Henderson, on Common 
Council, 102/., 271 /.; address as 
presiding officer, 272-73; last Negro 
member of, 273. 

AUston, Philip J., autobiographical 
sketch, 352 /. ; officer Negro Busi- 
ness League, 394 /. 

Amendments to Constitution, pro- 
posal of, following the war, 86; 
passage of Thirteenth, 87; of Four- 
teenth, 91; of Fifteenth, 93; Negro's 
disaffection with Republican party 
on account of non-enforcement of, 
120. 

American Anti -Slavery Society, 48, 88. 

American House, 324. 

American Journal of Religious Psy- 
chology and Education, 173 f. 

Amherst College, 456. 

Andrew, John A., w., " War Gov- 
ernor" of Massachusetts, 72-74. 

Anglo-Saxon, 287, 388. 

Anti-Negro riots, during Civil War, 74. 

Anti-Slavery, early movement, 36 /. 
(See Abolition, and Slavery.) 

Anti-Slavery Harp, The, 56. 

Anti-Washington agitation, by Ne- 
groes, 122-25. 

Antipathy. (»S'ee Discrimination.) 

Aristocracy, the Negro, 179, 181-183. 

Arkansas, 33 /., 34 /, 51, 108 /. 

Arming of Negroes, decided upon by 
Federal Government, 72. 



482 



INDEX 



Annistead, Edward H., on Common 

Council, 271/. 
Armstrong, Samuel T., w., 449. 
Armstrong, William O., court officer, 

101 ; in Legislature, 101 /. 
Art Club, the Boston Negro, 202. 
Art Club, Providence, 451. 
Art Museum, 190, 304/. 
Artistic progress of Negro, 82. 201- 

02, 359, 437-38, 451. 
Asiatic, 135. 

Associated Charities, Boston, 214. 
Athenaeum Library, 169. 
Atkinson, Edward, w., 70/. 
Atlanta, Ga., 110, 115, 116. 
Atlanta Address. {See Washington, 

Booker T.) 
Atlanta Constitution, 110, 117. 
Atlanta University, 456. 
Atlantic Monthly, 138 /. 
Attucks, Crispus, chief hero of Boston 

Massacre, 9-10; petition of Negroes 

for memorial to, 83, 449. 
Australia, 138/. 
Authors, Negro, 19-21, 26, 56, 82, 

104, 204-07, 450. 
Awakening, of Negroes in Boston, 82- 

84, 446. 

Baker, Gertrude M., school teacher, 
188/. 

Bagnall, Rev. Powhattan, 241 /. 

Bahamas, 1, 399. 

Bailey, J. B., early gymnasium mas- 
ter, 453. 

Baldwin, Louis E., on Cambridge 
Common Council, 102 /. ; editor 
103/. 

Baldwin, Maria L., principal of public 
school, 188, 194 /. 

Ballot. (See Vote.) 

Banking Company, the Eureka, 367. 

Banks, Walden, on Common Council, 
102/. 

Bannister, Edward M., pioneer art- 
ist, 451. 

Baptists, 169, 241, 242, 243, 248, 250, 
259, 452. 

Barbadoes, James G., member Gen- 
eral Colored Association, 36 /. ; early 
Abolitionist, 46 /.; delegate to 
Anti-Slavery Convention, 48/. 

Batum, William H., biographical 
sketch, 304 /. 

Beacon Hill, 143, 144, 169. 

Begging, 214. 

Beman, Rev. Jehial C, 452. 

Benjamin, Edgar P., autobiographi- 
cal sketch, 361 / 

Benjamin, Judah P., w., 361 /. 

Bible, Negro quotation of, 247. 

Biddulph, Canada, 61 /. 

Birth rate, 13.3-39, 156. (See Statisti- 
cal Tables.) 

Black Belt, 127, 220/., 407, 423. 

*' Black Laws," 136. 

Black Man, The, 104. 



Body of Liberties. (See Liberties.) 

Book of Elizabethan Verse, The; o/ 
Georgian Verse; of Restoration Verse; 
of Victorian Verse: — anthologies 
by Braithwaite, Negro poet, 206 /. 

Booklovers, literary society, 203. 

" Boss," Negro, 272, 291-292. 

BuMon Hymn, The, by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, 69 /. 

Boston Massacre, events following, 
10-11; national significance and 
consequences of , 11. (See Attucks.) 

Boston Normal School, 137 /., 188. 

Boston Theatre, 94. 

Bowdoin Square Stock Company, 368. 

Bowery, 366. 

Boy Scouts, 195. 

Boston University, 138/., 361 /., 456. 

Bradstreet, Governor, w., 5. 

Braithwaite, William Stanley, poet, 
anthologist, and critic, 204-05; 
autobiographical sketch, 205-06. 

Brigham's Restaurant, 94 /. 

Brimley, Fred, member General Col- 
ored Association, 36 /. 

Briti.sh possessions, 11, 45, 52, 173/., 
205/ 

Brookline, 151. 

Brooks, Paul C, on Common Council, 
283/. 

Brown, Edward Everett, office holder, 
300 /.; leader in recent period, 
456. 

Brown, J. C, founder of Negro Col- 
ony at Biddulph, Canada, 61. 

Brown, William Wells, Abolitionist, 
56; recruiting agent in Civil War, 
73; later writings, 104; exceptional 
character of, 114; further reference 
to. 450. 

Brownsville, Tex., 211, 293-95. 

Bruce, Roscoe Conkling, debater, 
203/. 

Bryan, William Jennings, w., 294. 

Brvant, W. W., political appointee, 
103. 

"Bucks of America," Negro company 
from Massachusetts in Revolution, 
13-14. 

Bunker Hill. (See Revolution.) 

Burdett Business College, 173. 

Burke, Peter, typical immigrant from 
West Indies, 170/. 

Burns, Anthony, famous fugitive 
slave, 63-64. 

Burr, Seymour, soldier in Revolution, 
14. 

Bush, Mrs. Olivia Ward, leader in or- 
ganization of Negro women, 212 /. 

Business League, the Negro, in con- 
nection with equal rights agitation, 
122; organization and history of, 
393-94. 

Business proprietorship, of Negro, in 
early days, 18; development of dur- 
ing Abolition period, 82; at present, 
347, 351, 357, 363-72. 



INDEX 



483 



Butler, Governor Benjamin F., w., 

101, 120. 

California, 60. 

Calvary Baptist, Negro Church, 

242 /., 259. 
Cambridge, 6, 12, 13, 61 /, 95, 101, 

102, 151, 187, 188, 188/., 189, 190, 
201 /., 208, 211, 216, 217-218, 234, 
240, 242, 273, 274, 287, 290, 300, 
300 /., 304 /., 370, 371, 382, 383, 
386, 388, 392, 394. 

Cambridge Neighborhood House, 190, 
193 

Canada, 38, 56/., 57, 61, 62, 63, 142, 
171, 173, 232, 277, 281. 388, /. 

Canadian, 171, 388. 

Canaries, 4. 

Cape Verde, Islands of, 172. 

Carney, Serg't. Wm. H., heroism at 
FortWagner, 77; messenger to Mass. 
Secretary of State, 77 /., 302 /. 

"Carpet Baggers," 92. 

Carrington, Rev., 211. 

Carroll, Jacqueline, school teacher, 
188/. 

Carter, Leigh, bank clerk, 349 /. 

Castle Square Stock Company, 368. 

Caucasian, 1, 93, 164, 179, 182, 198, 
203, 227, 353/., 354/. 

Celts, 433. 

Census, first national, 8. 

Chappellc, Julius B., in legislature, 
101 /.; connection with Crispus At- 
tucks Monument, 103/.; leader fol- 
lowing the war, 455. 

Characteristics of Negro, in early 
days, 24, 26; as commented on by 
Garrison, 43-44; as exhibited in 
Reconstruction period, 108-09; as 
represented by the South, 111-13, 
115; as displayed by Southern im- 
migrants, 113-14; reference to in 
Booker T. Washington's Atlanta 
address, 116-17; as related to 
Washington's policy, 127-28; in 
physical respects, 133-37; in social 
respects, 159-04; as connected with 
nativity, 165-73; with social grada- 
tions, 174-85; with Negro's social 
nature, 198-99; with his cultural 
and artistic capacity, 200-06; with 
reference to women, 212-13; in con- 
nection with self-support, 213-14; 
ethically, 218-23; in religious ex- 
pression, 243-65; in political con- 
duct, 276-77, 278-279, 283-84; in- 
dustrially and economically, 31.5- 
20, 323-324, 391-92; final analysis 
of, 401-05, 419-21, 437-38. 

Charge to the African Lodge, 26. 

Charity Club, Cambridge, Negro wo- 
men's organization, 211. 

Charles Street African Methodi-st 
Church, 203/., 210; founding of, 
241; recent growth, 258-59; social 
work, 260-61. 



Charleston, Georgiana, teacher,' 
137/. 

Charleston, S.C, 61/., 141, 361/. 

Charlestown, 15, 17, 100/., 101. 

Charter, of Boston, 272, 288-89. 

Chelsea, 151, 170/., 242, 275, 290, 
302/. 

Chicago, 298/., 388/. 

Chinese, 164, 202, 409. 

Christian, 233, 235, 236, 253, 256, 
354/. 

Christian Science, 228. 

Church of the Ascension, 191-92, 231, 
233. 

Church of England, 196, 232. 

Church, the Negro, first organization 
of, 21; influence on shifting of 
Negro population, 22; establish- 
ment of Methodist congregation in 
Boston, 46/.; anti-slavery prayer 
meetings, 69; celebration of Emanci- 
pation Proclamation in, 71; growth 
during Abohtion period, 83, 452; 
transference of, to South End in 
recent years, 146; help given native 
Africans in America, 173/.; meet- 
ing-place of Negro literary societies, 
203; reasons for establishment of 
first church, 225-26; historical de- 
velopment of churches in Boston, 
241-42; present list of, 242 /. ; weak- 
nesses of, 241-52; progress of, 252- 
65. 

Church attendance, of Negroes at 
white churches, earliest days, 21; at 
present, 225-38, 263. 

Church of God, Negro sect, 242; 
characteristics of, 244-47, 248. 

"Citizens' " ticket, 295. 

Citizenship. {See Rights.) 

Civil rights. (See Rights.) 

Civil service, Negroes in, 303-04. 

Civil War, causal relation of Abolition 
Movement to, 30; first predictions 
of, 35; foreseen by Garrison, 41; 
relation of Fugitive Slave Law to, 
61 ; breaking out of, 67; military sit- 
uation at time of Emancipation 
Proclamation, 72; Negro's part in, 
72-80; significance of, to the Ne- 
groes, 84 ; movement to secure fruits 
of, for Negroes, 85-87; effect of, on 
Negro population, 136; Negro's 
fortune following, 406. 

Clansman, The, 125. 

Clark, Jonas, 448. 

Clark, J. Milton, on Cambridge Com- 
mon Council, 102/. 

Clay, Henry, w., 62/. 

Cleveland, President, w., 99, 119. 

Clotel, 57 /. 

Coachmen, Benevolent Fraternity of, 
209/. 

Cole, comedian, 202 /. 

Cole, Thomas, member General Col- 
ored Association, 36/. 

College Settlement, New York, 195. 



484 



INDEX 



Collins, Mayor Patrick A., w., 296. 

Colonizing of Negroes. (See "Libe- 
rian" plan.) 

Color aversion, analysis of in Negro's 
case, 408, 409-10. 

Colorado, 33/., 89. 

Colored National League, equal 
rights organization, 121. 

Colored Patriots of the Revolution, 450. 

"Colored people," the term, 164, 181. 

Columbia University, 173. 

Common, the Boston, monument to 
Crispus Attucks erected upon, 11; 
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial upon, 
79; military salute from, following 
passage Thirteenth Amendment, 
87; Negro loafers in, 316. 

Common Council, Boston, Negro mem- 
bers of, 102, 268, 270, 271. 272-73, 
291, 300-01, 305; aboUtion of, 272, 
276, 282, 283, 288, 305. 

Common Council, Cambridge, 274-76. 

Common Council, Everett, 275. 

Community, sense of, among Negroes, 
following the war, 85; present 
growth of, 216-17; necessity for, 
432-34. 

Compromise of 1850, 60. 

Congregational, 192,242. 

Congress, 31, 51, 64, 68, 86, 87, 91, 92, 
93. 

Connecticut, 89, 99, 138, 452. 

Consciousness of kind. (See Com- 
munity.) 

Constitutional Convention of 1780, 
Massachusetts, 8. 

Constitutional rights. (See Rights.) 

Constructive policy, in Negro prob- 
lem, first enunciation of, 115-118. 

Consuls, U.S., Negro, 99, 137/. 

Continental Congress, 13. 

Contradictions, in regard to Negro. 
(See Inconsistency.) 

"Copperhead " element, 74. 

Copps Hill Burying Ground, section 
reserved for Negro slaves and freed- 
men, 17/.; grave and monument of 
Prince Hall, 21. 

Cotton gin, effect on slavery situation, 
32-33. 

Countess of Huntington, 19. 

Courant, Negro newspaper, 103/. 

Counsey, Robert F., property owner 
and landlord, autobiographical 
sketch, 388. 

Courtney, Dr. Samuel E., on School 
Board, 189; as a physician, 360/. 

Cowley Fathers, 239-40. (See Mis- 
sion Priests.) 

Cox, W. Alexander, officer Negro 
Busine.ss League, 394 /. 

Craft, Ellen and William, famous 
fugitive slaves, 61. 

Craft, Henry K., grandson of Ellen 
and William Craft, 61 /. 

Crawford, Joshua A., political leader, 
292. 



Cricket clubs, 171. 

Criminality, in early years, 26-28; in 
Southern cities, 166; in recent years 
219-21; in general, 403. 

Crowdy, William, "Prophet," 244-45, 
247. 

Crum, W. D., collector of customs, 
and Minister to Liberia, 61 /. 

Cuffe, Paul and John, defendants in 
first test case on the right to vote, 
23-24, 267. 

Cultural progress, pioneer Phillia 
Wheatley, the poetess, 19-21; dur- 
ing Abolition period, 83; following 
the war, 103-04; at present, 197- 
203, 437-38. 

Custom House, 99, 303. 

Cuticura, 352, 354 /. 

Dalton, Thomas, member General 
Colored Association, 36 /. ; pioneer 
Negro business man, 452-53. 

Dana, Richard H., Jr., w., 62/. 

Danish colonies, 45, 170/. 

Dartmoor Prison, 16/. 

Dartmouth, 24. 

Death rate, 133-39; gradual decrease 
of, 156-57; in Southern cities, 166. 
(See Statistical Tables.) 

Debt, of Negro churches, 250-51 ; 
reduction of, 259-60. 

Declaration of Independence, 8, 11, 
29, 39. 

Declaration of rights, Massachusetts, 
8. 

Decorative arts, 201-02. 

De Grasse, J. V., early physician, 451. 

de Mortie, Louise, educator, 136 /. 

de Mortie, Mark, Abolitionist, 136/. 
454. 

Democrats, of North, one of elements 
forming Republican party, 65; of 
South, displaced, 66; inviting atti- 
tude toward Negroes, following the 
war, 97-98; first city appointment of 
Negro, 103; significance of appoint- 
ment of James M. Trotter, 119-20; 
Edwin &. Walker's affiliation with, 
120/.; in Ward 8, 269; advances to 
Negro, 279; in Ward 18, 281, 283; 
Negro Democrats and the new city 
charter, 289; recent gains from 
Negroes, 295-98; present Adminis- 
tration's attitude, 303. 

Delaware, 46/. 

De.siro, the, trading vessel which 
brought first Negroes to Boston, 1. 

Dewey, Henry S., w., 295/. 

Dickinson, Anna E., w., 70/. 

Discrimination, forbidden in school 
attendance, 84; extent of after the 
war, 94; movement to prohibit, 94- 
96; in location of homes, 152-55; in 
public institutions, 189-90; refuta- 
tion of, in case of Theodore H. Ray- 
mond, 217-18; in church attend- 
ance, 233-38; in industry, 320-26, 



INDEX 



485 



351-57; in labor unions, 375-79; 
final analysis of, 399, 405-13; reduc- 
tion of, 421-27. 

Disease, early prevalence of, 26; in 
recent years, 133-34; in Southern 
cities, 164. 

District of Columbia, 3 1 , 40, 57, 99, 138. 

Disunion. (See Secession.) 

Douglass, Frederick, foremost Negro 
Abolitionist, 54-56; part of, in mass 
meeting to celebrate Emancipation 
Proclamation, 70; recruiting agent 
in Civil War, 73; attitude on disso- 
lution of anti-slavery societies, 88; 
general attitude of, later career, and 
death, 130; celebration of birth an- 
niversary by Negroes, 216; disap- 
proval of separate Negro churches, 
226; writings of, 450. 

Downing, George T., Abolitionist, 454. 

Dred Scott decision, 66/. 

Drury, Theodore, opera producer, 210. 

DuBois, W. E. B., Negro leader of 
equal right agitation, and execu- 
tive officer of National Association 
for the Advancement of Colored 
People, 126-27. 

Duckery, Rev. Henry, office-holder in 
Cambridge, 300 /. 

Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, Negro poet, 
204. 

Dunning, A. C, dentist, 170/. 

Dupree, William, federal appointee 
following the war, 99. 

Dutch, 4. 

Easton, Hosea, member General 
Colored Association, 36/. ; early Abo- 
litionist, 46/. 

Easton, Joshua, member General 
Colored Association, 36/. 

Eaton, Augusta P., w., 194. 

Eaton, Isabel, w., 195. 

Ebenezer Baptist, Negro church, 
242/. 

Ebenezer Baptist (Maiden), Negro 
church, 242/. 

Eldridge and Peabody's, 352. 

Eliot, Dr. Charles W., w., 79. 

Elks, Order of, among Negroes, 209. 

Emancipation, in Massachusetts, 8; 
in Northern states, 9, 31; in area 
not covered by Proclamation, 86; 
Negro's fortune following, 406. 

Emancipation Act, British, 170. 

Emancipation Proclamation, in rela- 
tion to Abolition Movement, 41; 
preliminary announcement of, 69; 
_ celebration over issuing of, in Bos- 
* ton, 69-71; military situation when 
issued, 72; measure of military 
necessity, 72; significance of, to 
Negroes, 84; movement to secure 
fruits of, for Negroes, 85-87; hmi- 
tations of, 85-86; celebration of 
anniversary of, by Negroes, 216. 

Emancipator, the, 48 /. 



Emerson, Ralph Waldo, w., 69. 

Emigration, of Negroes from Boston, 
136-39; future relation to Negro 
population of Boston, 155. (See 
Statistical Tables.) 

Emmanuel Church, 191, 230, 233. 

Emmanuel Memorial Parish House, 
191-92. 

England, 7, 19, 21, 31, 32, 45, 52, 53. 
56, 61/., 170/, 205/., 361/., 363/. 

English, 171, 205/., 4.54. 

English High School, 353, 361 /. 

Enlistment, of Negroes. (See Sol- 
diers.) 

Episcopalians, 169, 196, 229, 231, 233, 
239, 241. 

Equal rights. (See Rights.) 

Escape, The, 57 f. 

Ethical standards, 218-23; of minis- 
ters and churches, 248-50, 255-56; 
in general, 401, 402, 403, 404, 419- 
20. 

Ethiopia's Flight, 206-07. 

Europe, 52, 56, 135, 324, 363 /. 

Everett, 151, 242, 275, 290. 

Everett, Edward, w., 15. 

Expulsion of Negroes, attempted, 
27-29. 

Extinction, tendency toward among 
Boston Negroes, 138. 

Faneuil Hall, 43, 49, 58-59, 61/., 64, 
294. 

Federal Government, 8, 32, 34, 40, 66, 
68, 69, 86, 98, 109, 334. 

Female Benevolent Firm, pioneer 
Negro organization, 452. 

Field, Father, w., 196/. 

Fifth of March, anniversary of Boston 
Massacre, 11. 

Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, Negro 
regiment, 74, 76. 

Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts, Negro reg- 
iment, 74, 75, 76, 99. 

Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, most 
important Negro regiment in Civil 
War, organization of, 72-73 ; depart- 
ure from Boston, 73-74; refusal to 
accept pay as "laborers," 75; in 
assault upon Fort Wagner, 76-78; 
reception of on return to Boston, 
78; memorial to, 79, 454. 

First Independent Baptist Church. 
(See African Meeting House.) 

First Kansas Colored Regiment, 72/. 

First Negroes brought to Boston, 1 ; to 
the Colonies, 4. 

First South Carolina, Negro regiment, 
72/. 

Fitzgerald, John F., w., 296/. 

Florida, 108/., 455. 

Foraker, Senator, w., 294. 

Forbes, George W., editor of the 
Courant, 103 /. ; joint founder of the 
Guardian and attacker of Booker T. 
Washington, with W. M. Trotter, 
122-25; leader in recent period, 456. 



486 



INDEX 



Force bills, 92-93. 

Foreign born Negroes. (See Immigra- 
tion.) 

Foresters, Order of, among Negroes, 
209. 

Fort Sumter, 41, 67, 361 /. 

Fort Wagner, assault upon by Fifty- 
fourth Massactiusetts, Negro regi- 
ment, 76-79. 

Forten, Charlotte L., writer and 
educator, 136/. 

Foss, Governor Eugene N., w., 297/. 

Foster, Rev. Daniel, early school 
teacher, 448. 

Fourth of July, 11. 

Foxboro, 196. 

Framingham, 9/., 14. 

France, Mrs. Charlotte E., leader 
in organization of Negro women, 
212/ 

Franchise. (See Vote.) 

Francis, Esther L., teacher in South, 
137/ 

Franklin, Benjamin, w., 449. 

Fraternals, Negro organization, 209 /. 

Free Negroes, in early years, 7; in 
Revolution, 11-13; proportion of 
Negro population, 16-17; early 
immigration to Boston, 17; attitude 
of Garrison toward, 44-45; first 
annual convention of, 45/.; ap- 
pointment of Boston committee, 
46; recipients of political offices fol- 
lowing the war, 98; Boston's earlier 
acquaintance with Negro limited 
to, 114. 

" Free persons of color," origin of 
term, 164. 

Free-Soilers, 65. 

" Freedom's Birthplace," Boston's 
initial right to this title, 9; con- 
firmed by results of Abolition Move- 
ment and Civil War, 80. 

Freedom's Journal, first Negro news- 
paper in United States, 36. 

Freeman's Bank, 15. 

French and Indian Wars, 16/. 

French Canadian, 389. 

French Colonies, 45. 

French Revolution, 45. 

Fugitives, The, in Europe, 67 /. 

Fugitive slaves, in Boston, 7, 57-65, 
114, 136. 

Fugitive Slave Law, provisions and 
effect of, 60-61; virtual nullification 
of by Massachusetts, 65; relation 
to immigration of Negroes during 
Abolition period, 136. 

" Gag rule," 51. 

Gambling, 280. 

Gardner, Ehza, father's house used as 
shelter for runaway slaves, 57 /. ; 
part in organization of Negro wo- 
men, 212/.; activity since the war, 
454. 

Garland, Dr. C. N., physician, 3G0/. 



Garrison, Francis Jackson, w., 71 /. 

Garrison, George T., w., 74. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, w., early 
career, 39; publication of the 
Liberator and launching of the 
Abolition Movement, 39-41; rela- 
tion to division in Abolitionist 
ranks, 41; advice to free Negroes, 
44-45; connection with First Annual 
Convention of Free Colored People, 
45/., 46; support from Negro's 
loyalty and devotion, 48; initiative 
in organizing the .American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 48; erection of gal- 
lows before hou.se by anti-Aboli- 
tionists, 49; in Boston " Mob," 50; 
at World's Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion, 52-53; attitude on woman 
suffrage, 53; meeting and relation 
with Frederick Douglass, 54-56; at- 
tack upon Lincoln's attitude toward 
slavery after outbreak of Civil War, 
68-69; cheered at meeting to cele- 
brate issuing of Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, 70; at presentation of 
colors to Fifty-fourth Massachu- 
setts, 73; his son in Civil War, 74; 
statement regarding Thirteenth 
Amendment, 87; attitude on disso- 
lution of anti-slavery societies, and 
later life, 88-89; attitude on giving 
Negro the franchise, 89-90; biogra- 
phy of, by Grimk6, 104; death of, 
112; former residence used as Negro 
Home, 196; celebration of birth 
anniversary by Negroes, 216-17; 
disapproval of separate Negro 
churches, 226; sketch of Garrison's 
career preceding Abolition move- 
ment, 443-46 (details not indexed) ; 
petition for abolition of separate 
schools, 447; speaker at celebratory 
meeting, 449. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, The Story 
of his Life, Told by His Children, 
446/. 

Gaskins, Nelson, on Common Council, 
102/., 

Gaston, Hon. William A., w., 456. 

Gazette, the Boston, 9. 

General Colored Association of 
Massachusetts, 36, 47. 

Georgia, 38, 61, 108/., 110, 115, 116, 
456. 

German, 325. 

Globe, the Boston, 359 /. 

Globe Theater, 94 /. 

Goddard, Julius, Republican office- 
holder, 290 /., 300 /. 

Gooch, Hon. D. W., w., 455. 

Goode, Jesse, business man, 393. 

Goode, Dunson and Henry, grocery 
firm, 369-70, 393. 

Goode Trust Company, or Jesse Goode 
Associates, business concern, 392— 
93. 

Governor's Council, 283, 301. 



INDEX 



487 



Grady, Henry W., w., Southern ora- 
tor and editor, 110-11, 115, 117. 

G.A.R., Negro Post, 446 /. 

Grant, Dr. George F., dentist, 360/. 

Greater Boston, boundaries of, 139. 

Greeks, 324, 364. 

Greener, Richard Theodore, educator 
and consular officer, 136 /. 

Grimes, Rev. Leonard A., Abolition- 
ist, and post-bellum leader, 64 /., 
452. 

Grinik6, Angelina and Sarah, w. 455. 

Grimk6, Archibald H., attorney in 
civil rights litigation, 95; appointed 
consul at Santo Domingo, 99; edi- 
tor of Negro newspaper, 103 /. ; 
author of biographies of Garrison 
and Sumner, 104; reference to 
brother, 136 /.; president Boston 
Literary and Historical Society, 
203 /.; lawyer, 360; early history, 
455. 

Grimk6, Francis James, minister and 
author, 136 /., 455. 

Grimk^, Judge John F., w., 455. 

Groves, Marjorie, teacher, 137 /. 

Guardian, the, Negro newspaper de- 
voted to equal rights agitation, es- 
tablishment of, 122; review of Zion 
Church affair in, 124-25; as factor 
in Negro community, 216; anti- 
Roosevelt-and-Taft agitation, 293; 
as a business enterprise, 369. 

Guinea coast, 4. 

Haiti, 45. 

Hale House, 192. 

Halifax, 388 /. 

Hall, Charles H., on Common Coun- 
cil, 102 /., 271 /. 

Hall, Primus, in Revolution, 14. 

Hall, Prince, founder of first Negro 
Masonic lodge, and early leader, 21; 
"Charge to the African Lodge," 26; 
further mention, 405. 

Hallowell, Col., w., 74. 

Hampton Institute, 115/. 

Harlow, Thomas, w., 62 /. 

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, Abo- 
litionist and author, 104, 450. 

Harriet Tubman W.C.T.U. Home, 
Negro institution, 207. 

Harris, Charles E., in Legislature, 
101/.; on Common Council, 102/.; 
connection with civil rights statute, 
103/ 

Harris, Gilbert C, wig manufacturer, 
368; in Negro Business League, 
394/ 

Harris, N. W. & Co., 349/. 

Harvard University, 122 /, 136 /, 
189, 360, 453, 454, 455, 556. 

Hayden, Lewis, runaway slave and 
Abolitionist, house a favorite ren- 
dezvous, 57-58; part in rescue of 
Shadrach, 62/.; recruiting agent in 
Civil War, 73; almost only Negro 



office-holder before the war, 97; 

elected to Legislature, 101 ; death, 
113; further mention, 268/.; 302/; 
petitioner for memorial to Attucks, 
449; leadership, 453-54. 

Hayes, President, w., 109, 119. 

Hazel, William A., leader in recent 
period, 456. 

Heramings, Robert, artist, 202 /. 

Hendricks, Joseph, office-holder, 300/. 

Hibbard, George A., w., 296 /. 

Highway Commission, Cambridge, 
300. 

Hill, Arthur D., w., 297 / 

Hilton, John T., soldier in Revolution, 
14. 

Hilton, John T., member General Co- 
lored Association, 36 /. ; Abolition- 
ist, 449. 

Historical Building, 390/ 

History, of Negro in America, cele- 
bration of, 216-17; necessity for 
building up of, 432-33. 

Hodges, M. Hamilton, singer, in Aus- 
tralia, 138/. 

Hogan, Ernest, comedian, 202 /. 

Holbruok, Wellington, w., 153 /. 

Home, The Negro. {See Living condi- 
tions.) 

Home for Aged Colored Women, 
196. 

Hope Chapel, 192, 193. 

Hotels, Negro, 149, 365. 

House of Correction, 248. 

House of Falling Leaves, The, 206 /. 

Housing. (See Living conditions.) 

Houston, Joseph W., clerk in post- 
office, 303. 

Hoyt, Stewart, office-holder, 300 /. 

Howard, Peter, Negro barber whose 
shop was an Abolitionist rendez- 
vous, 57. 

Howe, Julia Ward, w., 217. 

Howell, Clark, w., 117. 

Hub, the, Negro n wspaper, 103 /. 

Hull House, 195. 

Hunt, A. H., physician, 170/ 

Hutchins, Basil F., undertaker, 370. 

Hyde Park, 455. 

Illinois, 31 /, 138. 

Immigrants, European, displacement 
of Negroes in lower occupations, 
324-25; forcing of Negroes into 
higher occupations, 356. 

Immigration, Negro, to Boston, in 
early days, 17; early objection to, 
26-27; relation to reaction of senti- 
ment toward Negro, 113-14; refu- 
gees from "Black Laws," 136 /.; 
since the war, 140-42; urban and 
suburban distribution, 150-51 ; 
future relation to Boston's Negro 
population, 155; immigrants from 
South, 165-66; from West Indies, 
169-71; from Canada, 171-72; from 
Africa, 172-73; problem of assimila- 



488 



INDEX 



tion, 174; Roman Catholics, 229; 
Episcopalians, 232; immigrants in 
Negro churches, 243-44; in relation 
to political conditions, 277-78, 281, 
285, 292-93; in industry, 313-14, 
328-29; in relation to Negro prob- 
lem, 407. (.See Statistical Tables.) 

Immorality. (.See Ethical standards.) 

Indiana, 31 /. 

Indians, 2-3, 3-4, 164, 409, 454. 

Independence League, 295. 

Independent, the, 173 /. 

Inconsistency, between Puritan ideals 
and Negro slavery, 2; between War 
for Independence and enlistment of 
Negroes as soldiers, 11-12; between 
principles of freedom and persecu- 
tion of Negroes, 29: between Dec- 
laration of Independence and post- 
ponement of Negro's emancipation, 
39-40; between Northern with- 
drawal from Reconstruction, and 
Negro's constitutional rights. 111. 

Industrial and economic conditions, 
in early days, 18; beginnings of pro- 
gress, 18-19; advance during Abo- 
lition period, 82-83; development 
of resources urged by Booker T. 
Washington, 116-18; hardships of, 
133; basic nature of, 308-10; Ne- 
gro's present backwardness, 311- 
20; historical review, 326-27; recent 
and present advance, 327-31 ; anal- 
ysis of census classifications, 331- 
33; lowest industrial group, 333-43; 
intermediate group, 343-57 ; highest 
group, 357-72; general progress, 
372-97. 

Industrial education, contemplated 
by Abolitionists, 43; implicit advo- 
cacy of in Booker T. Washington's 
Atlanta address, 118; general in- 
dorsement of, 130; in Liberia, 138/.; 
in Boston,314-15, 379-82; underly- 
ing significance of, 431-32. 

Infant deaths, 133. 

Inferior development of Negro, 399- 
412; progress in relation to, 413-21. 

Institute of Technology, 137 /. 

Institutions, Negro, virtual absence 
of in Boston, 207. 

Institutions, public, accessibility to 
Negroes, 189. 

Intermarriage, of Negroes and Indi- 
ans, 3-4; of American and West 
Indian Negroes, 171; of fugitive 
slaves and Canadian women, 171 /. 

Intermixture, of Negro and Caucas- 
ian strains, 179, 182-83. 

Inter-residence, of Negroes and whites, 
151-.55, 178-79, 181, 386, 434. 

Iowa, 33 /. 

Ipswich, 4.50. 

Irish, 145, 146, 148, 281. 

Iriih People, Address from the, 53-54. 

Israel 224 

Italians, 147, 148, 324, 382. 



Jackson, Francis, w., 447._ 

Jackson, John T., and family, as exem- 
plifying Negro's use of public 
schools, 185 /. 

James, slave plaintiff in early suit for 
manumission, 6. 

Jamestown, Va., 4 /. 

Japanese, 324, 410. 

Jeremiah, Book of, 69. 

Jesus Christ, 233, 247. 

Jewell, Harvey, w., 454. 

Jewell, Arthur, office-holder in Cam- 
bridge, 300 /. 

Jews, 144-45, 146-47, 148, 224, 361 /. 

" Jim-Crowism," 234. 

Johnson, comedian, 202 /. 

Johnson, President, w., 91-92. 

Joy Street Church. (See African 
Mee ting-House.) 

Kansas, 33 /., 64, 455. 
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 64. 
Kansas Relief Association, 455. 
Kenmore, Edwin, teacher, 137 /. 
Kentucky, 56 /., 58. 
Kimball Union Academy, 455. 
Knights of Pythias, among Negroes, 

209. 
Kroo tribe, 173 /. 
"Ku-Klux Clan," 92-93, 108. 

Labor, American Federation of, 377. 

Labor, Bureau of Statistics of, 302 /., 
375. 

Labor unions, as regards Negroes, 322, 
323, 373-79. 

Lake Erie, 56 /. 

Lane, W. C, office-holder in Cam- 
bridge, 102 /., 300/.; leader in re- 
cent period, 455. 

Latimer, George, famous fugitive 
slave, 58-59. 

Latimer, George, lawyer, 170 /. 

Leader, the Boston, Negro newspaper, 
103 /. 

Leaders, Negro, during Abolition pe- 
riod and after the war, 84 ; ex- 
tinction or dispersion of families of 
"Old Guard," 138-39; among the 
middle class, 179; among upper 
class, 182; present advocacy of coop- 
eration, 216; in the Negro Church, 
264; passing of older group, 278; 
disabilities of later aspirant.s, 278- 
79; in Ward 18, 280-83, 292; in 
Ward 10, 291-92; in politics gener- 
ally, 306-307; in relation to racial 
progress, 434. 

Leattimore, Andrew B., in legislature, 
101 /; on Common Council, 102 /. 

Lee, Joseph, innkeeper, 368. 

Lee, Joseph H., in Mexico, 138/. 

Legislature, Negroes in, etc., 99-101, 
26S, 270, 272, 274, 275, 276, 282, 
292, 301, 302/., 448, 451. 

Lenox, John M., office-holder follow- 
ing the war, 99. 



INDEX 



489 



Lew family, the, in Revolution, 14; in 
French and Indian Wars, 16 /. 

Lew, James A., on Cambridge School 
Committee, 189. 

Lewis, Eva, clerk in State House, 302 /. 

Lewis, Dr. Henry, on State Veterinary 
Board, 302 /. 

Lewis, J. H., tailor, 267-68. 

Lewis, Walker, member General Col- 
ored Association, 36 /. 

Lewis, William H., in civil rights leg- 
islation, 95; in legislature, 101 /., 
275; attitude on Negro question, 
128-29; prominence in community 
affairs, 217; on Cambridge Com- 
mon Council, 275; last Negro in 
Legislature, 275; high appoint- 
ments by President Taft, 295 /. ; 
Asst. U.S. District Attorney, 302; 
Asst. U.S. Attorney-General, 302- 
03; lawyer, 360; early life, 456. 

Liberator, the. Abolitionist paper, first 
number of, 39; last number, 88. 
{^See Abolition, and Garrison.) 

Liberia, 37, 61/., 138/., 172, 173/. 

"Liberian," or colonizing plan, con- 
demnation of by David Walker, 37; 
by Garrison, 45; discussed in Negro 
church, 257. 

Liberties, Massachusetts Body of, 
5-6, 24, 267. 

Library Association, the Adelphic, 
mixed organization, 83, 449-50. 

Library, the Pubhc, 189-90, 456. 

Licenses, Board of, Cambridge, 300; 
Boston, 365 /. 

Lincoln, President, w., his Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation as related to .abo- 
lition Movement, 41; his call for 
troops, 67; efforts to stop the war, 
67-68 ; slavery attitude attacked by 
Abolitionists, 68-69; preliminary 
announcement of Proclamation, 
69; cheered at celebratory meeting, 
70; name in text of Proclamation, 
70; attitude toward re-admitting 
Louisiana, 89; celebration of birth 
anniversary, by Negroes, 216. 

Lincoln University, 455. 

Liquor selling, 272, 280. 

Literary societies, 171, 203-04. 

Literary and Historical Society, The 
Boston, Negro organization, 203-04. 

Living conditions and districts, of 
Negroes in Boston, in earliest days, 
17; .shifting from North End to 
West End, 17, 22; influx to latter 
section after the war, 85, 102; shift- 
ing to South End and Roxbury in 
recent years, 143-49; gradual im- 
provement of conditions, 157; in re- 
lation to social gradations, 174-85; 
with reference to Negroes' general 
progress, 417. 

Livingstone College, Negro institu- 
tion, 137/ 

Lodge, Senator, w., 297. 



Lodges and beneficial societies, Negro, 
first in Boston, 21; increase during 
Abolition period, 83; present extent 
and work of, 207-09; property 
owned by, 392; historical develop- 
ment of, 452. 

London, 19, 52, 205 /. 

Loring, Ellis Gray, w., 450. 

Los Angeles Times, 206 /. 

Louisiana, 33 /, 34 /, 89, 90 /., 108 /, 
136/ 

Louisiana Native Guards, Negro regi- 
ment, 72/, 120. 

Louisiana Purchase, 33-35. 

Love and Charity, Negro order of, 208, 
452. 

Lovett, William C, salesman, 352/.; 
officer of Negro Business League, 
394. 

Lowell, w., poem "To W. L. Garris- 
son," 42. 

"Lower Broadway," the Negro, 149. 

Lowther, George W., in Legislature, 
101/ 

Lyman, Theodore, w., 28-29, 49, 50. 

Lynn, 201 /, 383. 

Lyrics of Life and Love, 206 /. 

Madagascar, 4, 5. 

Madeiras, The, 4. 

Madison, J. H., officer Negro Busi- 
ness League, 394 /. 

Maine, 450. 

Maiden, 151, 211, 242, 354 / 

Manumission. (See Emancipation.) 

Margetson, George Reginald, poet, 
206-07. 

Marriage rate, 135. (See Statistical 
Tables.) 

Marshall, Napoleon Bonaparte, office- 
holder, 300 / 

Masons, Negro, first lodge, 21 ; Prince 
Hall's "Charge," 23; Lewis Hay- 
den's writings, 454. (See Lodges.) 

Martin, Rev. John Sella, at Tremont 
Temple, 452. 

Maryland, 31, 46/, 54, 86, 162. 

Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 
88. 

Massachusetts Mercury, 27. 

Matthews, W. Clarence, athletic di- 
rector in public schools, 189. 

McClane, Rev. Walter D., 240. 

McCurdy, T. E. A., physician, 170/. 

McKane, Cornelius, physician, 173. 

McKim, Charles F., w., 79. 

McKinley, President, w., 121. 

Mecca, of Negroes, 166, 361 /. 

Medford, 151, 242. 

Melrose, 300 / 

Menial service. (See Servants.) 

ilenticulturists, Negro literary soci- 
ety, 203. 

Merchants Association, of Boston, 
110-11. 

Methodist, 46 /, 170, 192, 241, 242, 
243, 256, 452. 



490 



INDEX 



Metropolitan district, boundaries of, 
139. 

Mexico, 51, 60/., 138/. 

Michigan, 31 /, 3SS /. 

iVIigratorineas, of Negro, 137. 

Militia, Negro company, 275 /. 

Ministers. (See Church.) 

Minnesota, 31 /., 33 /. 

Mission Priests of St. John the Evan- 
gehst, 196-97, 232, 239-iO. 

Missions, among Negroes, 196, 225, 
238-41, 248, 263. 

Mississippi, 72, 107, 108 /., 423, 456. 

Missouri, 33, 34-36, 49, 86. 

Missouri Compromise, 34-36, 38. 

Mitchell, Charles L., federal appoint- 
ment, 97; in Legislature, 100; fur- 
ther mention, 359 /. 

Mitchell, Mrs. Nellie Brown, music 
teacher, 359 /. 

Martians, hypothetical visit of, 409. 

"Mob," the Boston, 49-50. 

Montana, 33 /. 

Montgomery Advertiser, 124. 

Montreal, 388 /., 389. 

Monumental Bank, of Charlestown, 
15. 

Morality. (See Ethical standards.) 

Moran, John B., w., 295 /. 

Morgan, Clement G., elected to ofEce 
in Cambridge, 274-75, 300 /. ; law- 
yer, 360; early history, 456. 

Morgan Memorial, 192. 

Morning Star Baptist, Negro church, 
242/. 

Morris, Emery, office-holder in Cam- 
bridge, 300 /. ; leader in recent 
period, 456. 

Morris, Robert, part in rescue of 
Shadrach, 61-62; counsel in school 
case, 448; pioneer Negro attorney. 
450-51; reference to nephew, 456. 

Morrison, Mrs. Minnie C, w., 153 /. 

Mortality. (See Death rate.) 

Morton, Judge, w., 153/. 

Mosefi, a Story of the Nile, 104. 

Mt. Olive Baptist, Negro church, 242. 

Mt. Zion Baptist, Negro Church, 
242/. 

Music, 104, 359, 437-38. 

Music and Some Highly Musical 
People, 104. 

Music Hall, the old, 69. 

My Southern Home, 104. 

Myrtle Avenue Baptist, Negro 
church, 242 /. 

Names, of Negroes, as indicating sta- 

tu.s in early days, 25; as showing 

derivation, 25 /. 
Nantucket, 54. 
Narrative of my Experience in Slavery, 

by Frederick Douglass, 56. 
Narrative of W. W. Brown, a Fugitive 

Sl.irr. 5(). 
National Association for the Adv.ance- 

nient of Colored People, 126-27. 



National Association of Colored Wo- 
men, 210-11. 

National Federation of Afro-Ameri- 
can Women, 210. 

National Independent Political 
League, Negro equal rights organi- 
zation, 126. 

National Shawmut Bank, 349 /., 353 /. 

Nativity, 'of Negroes in Boston, 14()- 
42; conditions accon'panying, 165— 
74. (See Statistical Tables.) 

Naturalization Bureau, 302. 

Navy, Ncgroesin.duringCivilWar, 75. 

Nebraska, 33/, 64. 

"Negro," the term, Negro's shrinking 
from, 163-64; tabooed by "Smart 
Set," 181; objected to by upper 
class, 182; necessity for pride in, 
434. 

Negro, the, in the American Rebellion, 
104. 

Negro problem, or question. (See 
Problem.) 

Negro-school abolition party, 448. 

Negro Year-Book, 394 /. 

Nell, William C, part in abolition of 
separate schools, 447, 449; peti- 
tioner for memorial to Attucks, 
449; writings, 450; reference to 
property ownership, 453. 

Nell, William G., member General 
Colored Association, 36 /. ; tailor, 
and father of William C. Nell, 447. 

New Brunswick, 171. 

New Bedford, 54. 

New England Anti-Slavery Society, 
42-43, 47, 71. 

New England Conservatory of Music, 
137/. 

New England Federation of Women, 
Negro organization, 210. 

New England Suffrage League, Negro 
equal rights organization, 126. 

"New Guinea," early name for Negro 
section, 17. 

New Hampshire, 455, 456. 

New Hampshire State College, 455. 

New Jersey, i98, 451, 455. 

New Thought, 228. 

New Year's Day, 1863, in Boston, 69- 
71. 

New York City, 36 /., 48 /., 210. 

New York State, 4, 46 /., 138. 

New York Evening Post, 71 /. 

New York Herald, 117 f. 

New York Tribune, 78 /. 

Newspapers, Negro, Freedom's Jour- 
nal, the earliest, .'56; after the war, 
103-04; as reflecting Negro life, 
199; as furthering sense of commun- 
ity, 216; number in U.S., 216. 

Newspaper reporters, Negro, 359. 

Newton, 151, 242. 

Newton, Osborn A., on Common 
Council, 271 /. 

Niagara Movement, Negro equal 
rights agitation, 126. 



INDEX 



491 



Noddle's Island, 1 /. 

Normal Art School, 137 /. 

North Carolina, 38, 108/., 141, 205/., 
209/, 352/, -149, 455. 

North Carolina, Sons of, Negro organ- 
ization, 209 / 

North Dakota, 33 /. 

Northeastern, the, publication of Ne- 
gro women, 210, 211. 

Northeastern Federation of Women's 
Clubs, Negro organization, 210-11. 

North End, 17, 172, 446, 447. 

Northwest Ordinance, 31. 

Northwest Territory, 31, 34. 

Nova Scotia, 171. 

Occupations. (See Industrial condi- 
tions.) 

Odd Fellows, Negro, 208, 392, 452. 

Office, public. (See Politics.) 

Ohio, 31 /, 99, 129, 294. 388/. 

Oklahoma, 33 /, 34 / 

Old Home Week, 212. 

Old North Church, 21, 225. 

Old South Church, the New, 192. 

Old South Meeting-House, 20, 225. 

Old State House, 50. 

Ontario, 171. 

Opera, presented by Negroes, 201. 

Oratory, 202-03, 438. 

Organization, among Negroes, begin- 
nings of, 21-24; for anti-slavery 
agitation, 36, 46-47; general devel- 
opment during Abolition period, 
82-83; transfer of headquarters to 
South End in recent years, 146; in 
present social advance, 197-223; in 
the church, 282-64; in politics, 
278-83; 289-307; in business, 391- 
94; generally, in racial progress, 
432-34, 440-41. 

Otis, Mayor Harrison Gray, w., 42. 

Painting, 201-02. 

Paris, 202. 

Parker, Theodore, w., 62 /. 

Parker Memorial, 192, 393 / 

Pasco, Louis, bank clerk, 349 /. 

Patrick, Dr. Thomas W., pharmacist, 
360/ 

Paul, Rev. Thomas, early Abolition- 
ist, 46/, 452. 

Paupers. (See Poverty.) 

Pelletier, Jo.seph C, w., 297/. 

Pennsvlvania, 46 /., 138. 

"People's" ticket, 29.5, 

Personal Uberty acts, 59-60, 65. 

Peters, "Dr.," husband of Phillis 
Wheatley, 19. 

Pharmacy, Massachusetts College of, 

Philadelphia, 45/, 46, 48, 61 /, 136/. 

Phi Beta Kappa, 122/. 

Phillips, Wendell, the Abolitionist, 
letter describing conditions, 62-63; 
leading orator, 68; at presentation 
of colors to Fifty-fourth, 73; oppo- 



sition to Garrison's position, and 
subsequent leadership, S8-89; death, 
112; petitioner for abohtion of sep- 
arate schools, 447; speaker at cele- 
bratory meeting, 449. 

Physical conditions, among Negroes, 
133-57. 

Pickens, Prof. WilUam, educator, 252. 

Pillsbury, Parker, w., 55. 

Pinheiro, Don T., dentist, 170 /. 

Pitcairn, Major, 14, 15. 

Pitts, Coffin, member General Co- 
lored Association, 36 /. 

Plummer, "Elder," preacher, 245, 
247. 

Plummer, William H., leader follow- 
ing the war, 455. 

Poems, 104. 

Poems, Miscellaneous, 450. 

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious 
and Moral, by PhilUs Wheatley, 19. 

Poetry, 19, 104, 204-07, 342, 438, 450. 

Pohsh people, 45, 224, 282. 

Political rights. (See Rights.) 

PoUtics, Negro in, before the war, 97; 
following the war, 97-108; recently 
and at present, 266-307; relation 
to his general progress, 417-18, 428- 
29, 435-36. 

Poor whites, 86 /. 

Pope, James W., on Common Council, 
102/ 

Population, Negro, increase of, in 
early years, 16-17; during Abolition 
period and war, 85; since the war, 
139-40. (See Statistical Tables.) 

Portuguese, 172. 

Portuguese Colonies, 45, 170/ 

Postoffice, Negroes in, 99, 167/., 303. 

Potter, Warren B., w., 353 /. 

Potter Drug and Chemical Corpora- 
tion, 354 /. 

Poverty, in early years, 26-28 ; at pres- 
ent, 213-14. (See Statistical Tables.) 

Prescott, General, w., 15. 

Pride. (See Race pride.) 

Priests, 2.30, 233, 238. 

Prince Hall Grand Lodge, Negro 
Masons, 21, 24, 452. 

Probate Court Building, 390 /. 

Problem , the Negro, in early days, 24— 
29; as affected by Abolition Move- 
ment, 30; in relation to slavery, 
30-36; as expressed in Walker's 
Appeal, 36-38; in connection with 
"free persons of color," 44-45; in 
anti-slavery societies, 47^8; imme- 
diately following the war, 81-82; as 
respects equal rights in nation, 85- 
93; with regard to civil rights in 
Massachusetts, 93-96; as affected 
by the reaction of recent years, 106- 
32; as to racial perpetuation, 133, 
155-57; as to residence among 
whites, 143, 152-55; as expre.ssed in 
Ethiopia's Flight, 206-07 ; as perme- 
ating Negro's life, 215-16; in social 



492 



INDEX 



organization and ethical advance, 
158-85, 218-23; in association with 
whites, 189, 190, 192-93; 217-18; 
in religious organization, 224-25, 
263-05; in attendance at white 
churches, 226-38; in the poUtical 
field, 266-67, 276-84, 304-07; in 
industry, 308-26, 351, 353-57, 373- 
97; final analysis of, 398-441. 

Progress of Negro, general summary 
of , 414-21 ; inter-relation with equal 
rights, 428-32; in nation, 439-41. 

Progressive Party, 298 /. 

Property ownersliip, in early days, 
19, 83, 453; at present, 341, 354 /., 
369, 382-91. 

Prospect Union, 187, 218. 

Protestant, 233. 

Providence, Bahamas, 1. 

Provinces, the, 171. 

Provincial Congress, 12. 

Pullman porters, 149, 317, 337, 340, 
388/. 

Puritans, 2, 39-40. 

Putnam, George, petition for aboli- 
tion of separate schools, 447. 

Putnam, General, w., 15. 

Quakers, 30-31, 35-36, 56 /. 
Quebec, 171, 388. 
Quincy, Mayor, 390/. 

Race pride, earliest manifestation of, 
83; Negro's lack of, 163; present 
signs and beginnings of, 217; neces- 
sity for, 432-34. 

Racial hostiUty, 408-09, 410. 

Ransom, Rev. Reverdy C., as an ora- 
tor, 203 /. 

Raymond, Rev. John T., minister of 
Abolition days, 452. 

Raymond, Theodore H., civic promi- 
nence in Cambridge, 217-18; re- 
markable business record, 370; 
ownership of property, 387 /. 

Reaction, in attitude of whites toward 
Negro, 106-32. 

Real estate. (See Property.) 

Readville, 73, 74. 

Reconstruction, passage and effect of 
Acts, 91-92, 106-09; Northern with- 
drawal from, 111-12; relation to 
Negro's disaffection with Repub- 
lican party, 293; Negro's conduct 
under, 406. 

Redistricting of Boston, effect on 
Negro's political fortunes, 269-70, 
276, 283. 

Reed, Miss F. Marion, valedictorian 
of class, 187 /. 

Reed, William L., in Legislature, 101/., 
270; deputy tax collector, 300/.; 
messenger to Governor and Coun- 
cil, 301. 

Regiments, Negro. (See Soldiers.) 

Religious conditions. (See Church.) 

Remond, Charlea Lenox, first Negro 



Abolitionist to take lecture plat- 
form, 47; in British Isles, 53; bearer 
of Address from the Irish People, 
53-54; in Latimer case, 58; recruit- 
ing agent in Civil War, 73 ; attitude 
on dissolution of anti-slavery socie- 
ties, 88; political appointments, 99; 
death, 113 ; petitioner for Attucks 
memorial, 449; activity following 
the war, 453. 

Repression, political, of Negro in 
South, 108. 

Republican party, in relation to Ne- 
gro, 65-66, 86, 91, 97-98, 102, 109, 
119-21, 269, 271-72, 273-74, 279, 
281, 289, 290-91, 293-98, 307. 

Revolution, as giving death-blow to 
slavery in IVIassachusetts, 9, 31; 
Negro's share in events preceding, 
9-11; his part in the war, 11-16; 
as compared with his share in Civil 
War, 80. 

Rhode Island, 138, 304 /., 451 /., 454. 

Richmond, Va., 57, 141, 208, 454. 

Ridley, Ulysses S., tailor, 368. 

Rights of man, 9, 31. 

Rights and privileges, of Negro, in 

• early days, as to school attendance 
and franchise, 22-24 ; of free Negroes 
before the war, 45 ; enactment of 
constitutional rights after the war, 
in nation, 85-93; civil rights in 
Massachusetts, 93-96; Northern 
reaction concerning, 109-15; atti- 
tude of Booker T. Washington con- 
cerning, 115-18; counter-agitation 
among Negroes, 118-32; division 
among Negroes regarding, 203, 278; 
protest against Republican deser- 
tion of, 293; historical review, 414; 
relation to Negro's general pro- 
gress, 428-30. 

Rising Son, The, 104. 

Robert Gould Shaw House, 193-95, 
433/. 

Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 79, 454. 

Roberts, Benjamin F., plaintiff in 
separate school case, 448. 

Roberts, Dr. Isaac L., on Common 
Council, 271 /. 

Roberts, Robert, early Abolitionist, 
46 /. 

Roberts, Sarah, minor concerned in 
separate school case, 448. 

Robinson, Alexander, office-holder, 
302/. 

Robinson, David R., on Common 
Council, 271 /. 

Rochester, N.Y., 130/., 226. 

Rock, John S., Abolitionist, speaker at 
celebration of Emancipation Procla- 
mation, 70; recruiting agent in Civil 
War, 73; lawyer and physician, 451 ; 
dentist, 453. 

Roman CathoHcs, 169, 172, 197, 224. 
229, 230, 232, 233, 238, 239, 262. 

Roman Empire, 253. 



INDEX 



493 



Roosevelt, President, w., 61 /., 293- 

95, 297, 298 /. 

Roxbury, 15, 145, 196, 273, 280. 

RufBn, George L., lawyer, in Legis- 
lature, 100-01; appointed a judge, 
101; onCommonCouncil, 102/.; fur- 
ther mention, 120/.; 209-10, 454. 

RufEn, Mrs. George L., editor, 103 /. ; 
leader in organization of Negro 
women, 209-10; activity following 
the war, 454-55. 

Ruffin, Stanley, on Common Council, 
270/, 402/. 

Runaway slaves. (See Fugitive 
slaves.) 

Rush A. M. E., Negro Church, 242 /. 

Russian-Japanese War, 137 /. 

St. Augustine's Mission, 196, 196 /., 
239. 

St. Bartholomew's, Negro Episcopal 
Church, 235, 240-41. 

St. Domingo, 99. 

St. Domingo, by William Wells Brown, 
57. 

Saint-Gaudens, w., 79. 

St. John's Baptist, Negro church, 242/. 

St. John the Evangelist, Church of, 
172. 

St. Luke, Negro order of, 208. 

St. Margaret Sisters, 196. 

St. Mark Congregational Church 
(Negro), 203, 241/ 

St. Mark Musical and Literary Union, 
Negro organization, 203-04. 

St. Martin's Mission, 196, 239. 

St. Michael's Misson, 239. 

St. Monica's Home, 196, 211. 

St. Patrick's Negro Catholic Mission, 
238-39 

St. PaulA. M. E., Negro Church, 
242/. 

St. Paul's Baptist, Negro Church, 
241. (See African Meeting House.) 

St. Peter's Church, 234-35. 

St. Stephen's Baptist, Negro church, 
242/. 

Salem, 450. 

Salem, Peter, heroism at Bunker Hill, 
14-15. 

Savage, Henry W., w., 369. 

Scarlett, John E., member General 
Colored Association, 36 /. 

Schenck, John W., office-holder, 302/ 

School attendance, of Negroes, at first 
in general public schools, 22; Negro 
private school, 21-22; separate city 
schools, 23; abolition of separate 
schools, 83-84: present school at- 
tendance, 185-90; Negro teachers 
and officials, 188-89; in relation to 
Negro's political status, 28.5-86; 
general mention, 360; as factor in 
Negro's progress, 429; history of 
final admission of Negroes to public 
schools, 446-49; text of present law, 
448. 



Scotland, 53. 

Sculpture. 201-02. 

Seavers, Richard, in War of 1812, 16 /. 

Secession and disunion, 35, 49, 65-66. 

Segregation, of Negro, in semi-public 
institutions, 193; present tendency 
toward, 407. (See Discrimination.) 

Self-reliance, Negro's philosophy of, 
414-16. 

Selling of Joseph, The, 6. 

Sentiment, Northern, for Negro fol- 
lowing Civil War, 81-82; reaction 
in, 106-32. 

Servants, Negroes as, first mention of, 
1 / ; early use of term servant, 5; 
effect of abolition of slavery in 
Massachusetts, 18; Negro regarded 
as ordained serving-man, 25; men- 
ial characteristics, 161; large pro- 
portion of Negroes in menial serv- 
ice, 311-12; 313, 317; Negro's loss 
of ground in, 324-25; progress 
through, 327-29; conditions sur- 
rounding, 336-43; in relation to 
labor unions, 373-74. 

Shadrach, famous fugitive slave, 61- 
62. 

Shaw, Chief Justice, w., 8. 

Shaw, Francis G., w., 72-73. 

Shaw, Rev. M. A. N., from West 
Indies, 170/. 

Shaw, Mrs. Quincy A., w., 190-91. 

Shaw, Col. Robert Gould, appoint- 
ment to command Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts, Negro regiment, 
72; heroism at Fort Wagner, and 
death, 76-78; memorial to, 79, 454. 

Shiloh Baptist, Negro church, 242 /. 

Services of Colored Americans, 450. 

Sexual laxity, 221-22, 248-50, 255- 
56, 403. 

Seventh Day Adventist, Negro 
church, 242. 

Sewall, Judge Samuel, w., 6. 

Simms, S. William, on Common Coun- 
cil, 271 /. 

Skilled workmen, Negro, in early 
days, 19; in Abolition period, 82; 
at present, 347-48; in relation to 
labor unions, 373-74; property 
ownership among, 387; as factor in 
Negro's general progress, 432. 

Slack, Charles W., w., 70/., 449. 

Slave galleries, 21, 225. 

Slave ship, first one fitted out in colo- 
nies, 4. 

Slave trade, rise and decline in Mass- 
achusetts, 4-5; abolition of, 8, 27. 

Slavery, of first Negroes in Boston, 1; 
in contradiction of Puritan ideals, 
2; of Indians, before Negroes, 2-3; 
humane treatment of slaves in 
Massachusetts, 5; rise of anti-slav- 
ery sentiment, 6-7; slavery's eradi- 
cation in Massachusetts, 7-9; effect 
of slavery on Negro's character, 
160-61; on hia religious life, 253; his 



494 



INDEX 



degradation under, 400; prejudicial 

heritage of, 422. 

Slavs. 433. 

Smalls, Gen. Robert, in discrimina- 
tion case, 95 S- 

"Smart Set." the Negro, 179-80, 227. 

Smith, Abrel, w., 447. 

Smith, Blanche V., school teacher, 
188/. 

Smith, Clarence J., office-holder, 302/. 

Smith, Eleanora A., school teacher, 
188/. 

Smith, Mrs. Hannah C, leader in 
organization of Negro women, 212/. 

Smith, Harriet L., school teacher, 
188 /. 

Smith, John J., Negro whose barber 
shop was an Abolitionist rendez- 
vous, 57; in Legislature, 100; on 
Common Council, 102 /.; further 
mention, 188 /. 

Smith, Joshua B., abolitionist, in Leg- 
islature, 101; petitioner for Attucks' 
memorial, 449; caterer, 453; activ- 
ity following the war, 454. 

Smith, Mary E., school teacher, 188/ 

Smith School, for Negroes, erection of, 
446; attempt to break up, 448; 
reminiscence of, 449. 

Snowden, Rev. Samuel, early Aboli- 
tionist, 46 /. 

Social gradations, 174-85. 

Social service, 209-12; 260-61. 

Sojourner Truth Club, Negro women's 
organization, 211-12 

Soldiers, Negroes as, in the Revolu- 
tion, 12-16; in French and Indian 
Wars, and War of 1812, 16 /; first 
Negro regiments in Civil War, 72 /. ; 
Negro's vital part in the war, 71-80; 
emigration of soldiers from Boston, 
136; in militia, 275/.; tin "Browns- 
ville affair," 293-95. 

Somersett case, 6-7, 8. 

Somerville, 151. 

Sonysi of Life, 206. 

South America, 173 /. 

South Carohna, 66, 95/, 137/., 455. 

South Dakota, 33 /. 

South End, 99 /, 145-48, 192, 196 /., 
229, 231, 250, 262, 271, 273, 276, 
280. 

South End House, 194, 202. 

South Shore, 368. 

Southern Europeans, 409. 

Spaniards, 172. 

Sparrow, Mrs. Arianna C, leader 
after the war, 454. 

Sparrow, W. S., tailor, 368. 

Spiritualism, 228. 

S(iuantum, 368. 

Stamina, Negro's lack of, 404-05; 
progress in acquiring, 419-20. 

Standard of living, 135. (See Living 
condition.s.) 

Stars and Stripes, the, 67. 

State House, 301, 345, 349. 



Stevenson, William, on Cambridge 
Common Council, 102 /. 

Still, James, leader following the war, 
455. 

Storey, Moorfield, w., 126. 

Storrow, James J., w., 296/. 

Street, H. Gordon, editor, 103 /.; 
leader following the war, 455. 

Stubbs, Julian, office-holder, 302 /. 

Suburbs, increase of Negroes in, 149- 
51; distribution of latter among 
whites, 152; Negro churches in, 242; 
poUtical conditions, 273-75; Negro 
business places, 371. (See also par- 
ticular suburbs.) 

Sumner, Charles, w.. Senator and 
Abohtionist, friendsliip for John J. 
Smith, 57; in rescue of Shadrach, 
162 /. ; biography by Archibald H. 
Grimk6, 104; subject of declama- 
tion by Negro schoolboy, 188; attor- 
ney in separate school case, 448. 

Sunday School, 230-31, 232, 234, 
258-59. 

Supreme Court, 94, 153 /., 448. 

Synagogues, Negro churches made 
into, 145; made into Negro churches, 
147. 

Swedenborgianism, 228. 

Swedes, 146, 325. 

Taft, President, w., 293-95. 

Taxation Act, 10. 

Teachers, Negro, going from Boston 
to South, 136-37; in Boston schoola 
188-89; in general, 359-60. 

Teamoh, Robert T., in Legislature, 
101 /. ; connection with civil rights 
statute, 103/.; newspaper reporter, 
359/. 

Tennessee, 108 /. 

Teutons, 433. 

Texas, 51, 108/. 

Theaters, 94. 

Thirteenth Amendment, passage of, 
87; relation to dissolution of anti- 
slavery societies, 88. 

Thompson, George, w., 49, 50. 

Three Years in Europe, 56 /. 

Trade School for Girls, the Boston, 
379 381 

"Tragedy of color," the, 182-83. 

Transcri/it, the Boston, 153 /., 445. 

Tremont Temple, 67, 09-71, 452. 

Trinity Church, 196. 

Trotter, James M., political ap- 
pointee following the war, 99; au- 
thor, 103; withdrawal from Repub- 
lican party, 119; appointment by 
President Cleveland, 119. 

Trotter, William Munroe, son of 
James M. Trotter, founding of the 
Guardian and launching of attack 
upon Booker T. Washington by, 
122-25; leader in equal rights agita- 
tion, 125-26; president of Boston 
Literary and Historical Society, 



INDEX 



495 



[ 203 /.; part in anti-Roosevelt-and- 
Taft agitation, 293-95; business 
man, 369. 

True Reformers, Negro organization, 
208. 

Trumbull, Colonel, w., 15. 

Twe, Dihdwo, native Liberian stu- 
dent, in Boston, 173 /. 

Twelfth Baptist Church (Negro), 
ministers, 64 /., 170/.; founding of, 
241; in Abolition days, 452. 

Twentieth Century Club, 124. 

Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry, Negro 
regiment in "Brownsville aflfair," 
293. 

Tuberculosis, Negro's susceptibility 
to, 134. 

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial 
Institute, reference to, 62 /. ; found- 
ing of, by Booker T. Washington, 
115-16; type of education repre- 
sented by, 118; native Africans 
attending, 173 /. ; research and re- 
cord department, 394 /. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 454. 
Underground Railway, 57, 171, 452. 
Union, the, 30, 40, 49, 66-67, 68, 71, 

72, 80, 84, 85-87. 
Union Baptist, Negro church, 242 /. 
Union Baptist (Maiden), Negro 

church, 242 /. 
Unions. {See Labor unions.) 
Unitarians, Negro church, 241. 
United Daughters of Zion, pioneer 

Negro women's organization, 4.52. 
Unity Club, Negro organization, 209 /. 
University of South Carolina, 137 /. 
Upton, the, Negro Hotel, 365. 

Venality, of Negro voters, 286-88. 

Veterans, Negro, 84. 

Veterinary Physicians, Board of, 301. 

Virginia, 4 /., 31, 38, 46 /., 58, 108 /., 
115,116/., 120, 138, 141,162,368, 
452, 454, 455, 456. 

Vitality, Negro's deficiency in, 133. 

Vladivostok, 137 /. 

Vote, Negro's first establishment of 
right to, 23-24; free Negroes urged 
by Garrison to use, 45; bestow- 
ment upon Negro following the 
war, 86-93 ; general queries concern- 
ing, 266-67; interference of Negro's 
occupations with, 278; increase and 
enhanced qualifications of Negro 
voters, 284-86; venaUty, 286-88; 
effect of new city charter, 288-89; 
in ward 18, 281-83, 292; recent in- 
dependence of Negro voters, 295- 
98; their increased strength, 306- 
07 ; vital relation of vote to Negro's 
progress, 428-29. 

Waiters' Alliance, Boston Colored, 

377. 
Waiters' Association, 209 /. 



Wales. 53. 

Walker, comedian, 202 /. 

Walker, David, forerunner of Aboli- 
tion Movement, address on anti- 
slavery, 36; his "Appeal," 36-38; 
death, 38; previous history, 38 /. ; 
further mention, 405-51. 

Walker, Edwin G., son of David 
Walker, in Legislature, 100; consid- 
ered for judgeship, 120 /. ; admis- 
sion to bar, 451. 

Walker, Walter F., in Liberia, 138/. 

Walker's Appeal, publication and 
effect of, 36-38; factor in national 
organization of free Negroes, 46; 
further mention, 100. 

War of 1812, Negro's part in, 16 /. 

Warren, Gen. Joseph, w., 15. 

Washington, D.C., 68, 70 /., 136/., 
130 /, 162, 302. 

Washington, Booker T., early career, 
115 /.; Atlanta address, 115-18; 
attacked by equal rights agitators, 
121-25; general endorsement of his 
policies, 127-32; division among 
Negroes concerning, 203, 278; 
founding of Bu.sines3 League, 393; 
voicing of philosophy of self-reli- 
ancy, 415-16, 4.33. 

Washington, George, attitude toward 
enlisting Negroes in Revolution, 
12-15 ; Primus Hall incident, 14; 
honor conferred upon Peter Salem, 
15. 

Washington, Mrs. S. I. N., daughter 
of Negro AboUtionist, 454. 

Washington National League, organ- 
ization of Negro women, 210. 

Washington Post, 124. 

Watkins, William J., early lawyer, 
451. 

Webster, Daniel, w., 11. 

Weeks and Potter Co., 353 /. 

Weld, Theodore D., w., 455. 

Wells Memorial, 187, 380. 

Wendell Phillips Club, equal rights 
organization of both races, 121. 

West End, 17, 22, 57, 58 /., 85, 102, 
143-45, 196, 196 /., 231, 239, 2.50, 
^62, 268, 269, 271, 273, 276, 290, 
305, 366, 389/., 392, 453, 456. 

West Indians, 169-71. 

West Indies, 4, 90 /., 142, 170, 173, 
229, 232, 277, 281, 455. 

Wheatley, Phillis, early Negro poetess, 
19-21 ; member of Old South congre- 
gation, 225; voicing of Negro's trib- 
ulations, 405. 

Whigs, 65. 

White, George R., w., 353 /. 

White, Hon. John H., w., 456. 

Whitney, Eli, w., inventor of cotton 
gin, 32-33. 

Whittier, w., celebration of birth an- 
niversary by Negroes, 216; first 
publication of poems by Garrison, 
443. 



496 



INDEX 



Williams, Bert, comedian, 202 /. 

Williams, Charles W. M., on Com- 
mon Council, 2/1 /. ; clerk of Juven- 
nile Court, 300-01. 

Williams, George F., w., 448. 

Williams, Henry H., w., 447. 

Williams, William J., alderman in 
Chelsea, 275 /., 302 /.; public ad- 
ministrator, 302 /. ; lawyer, 360. 

Wilson, Butler R., attorney in civil 
rights legislation, 95; editor, 103 /.; 
president Boston Literary and His- 
torical Society, 203 /.; lawyer, 360; 
early life, 456. 

Winchester, 242. 

Wisconsin, 31 /. 

Woburn, 151, 242. 

Wolff, James G., clerk in office of dis- 
trict attorney, 297, 301 /. 

Wolff, James H., elected head of Mass. 
G.A.R., and appointed Fourth of 
July orator by municipality, 217; 
lawyer, 360; early life, 455; further 
mention, 301 /. 

Woman Suffrage Movement, origin 
of, at World's Anti-Slavery Con- 
vention, 53; present opportunity 
for, among Negroes, 213. 

Women's Educational and Industrial 
Union, 380. 

Women's Era Club, Negro organiza- 
tion, 209-10. 

Women's organizationa, among Ne- 
groes, 209-13, 452. 



Women's Protective League, Maiden; 
Negro organization, 211. 

Woods, Ruth, clerk in State House, 
302/. 

Worcester, 64, 450. 

Work, Monroe W., editor Negro Year- 
Book, 394 /. 

World's Anti-Slavery Convention, 52- 
53. 

Wright, E. I., physician, 170/. 

Wright, Mrs. Minnie T., leader in or- 
ganization of Negro women, 212 /. 

Wyoming, 33 /. 

Yates, lola D., school teacher, 188 /. 

Young Men's Christian Association, 
170, 187, 292/., 380. 

Young Men's Christian Union, 187, 
218. 

Young Men's Educational Aid Asso- 
ciation, Negro organization, 207. 

Young Men's Republican Club, Ne- 
gro organization, 291. 

Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion, 187, 218. 

Zion African Methodist, Negro church, 
( connection with equal rights agita- 
tion, 122; founding, 241; reduction 
of debt, 259-60; in Abolition days, 
452. 

"Zion Church Affair," the, equal 
rights incident, 124-25. 

Zulu, 173 /. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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